
FT MEADE 
GenCo 1 1 







THE 


LOOM OF DESTINY 

y 

Arthur J. Stringer 



Boston 

Small, Maynard & Company 
1899 

1 



COPIES RECEIVED, 


Copyright, l8gg, by 
Small, Maynard & Company 

(incorporated) 


Entered at Stationers’ Hall 
library of Congrssjfi 
Officp o f thA 


N0V2O18Q9 

Register of CopyrlghtSi 








\ 


48G70 


SECOND COPY, 


SSitiijersttg Press 

Cambridge, U. S. A. 


JVw -V 


NOTE 


AM indebted to the editor o/* Ainslee's 



Magazine for the privilege of incor- 
porating in this volume those stories 
which originally appeared in that publi- 
cation under the title o/* The Loom of 
Destiny. 


A. f S, 


I 


* 


CONTENTS 


Page 

Premonitions 3 

The Undoing of Dinney Crockett . . n 

The Fly in the Ointment 27 

The Iron Age 35 

The King who lost his Crown ... 51 

Life’s Loaded Die 63 

The Crucible of Character .... 83 

The Essentials of Aristocracy . . . 103 

The Honour of the House of Hum- 

MERLEY II7 

Thicker than Water 135 

Instruments of Eros 157 

An Essay in Equality 169 

The Heart’s Desire 179 

Not in Utter Nakedness 201 




PREMONITIONS 


Then all the World seemed but a game, 

A shadowy thing at Eventide, 

Where thro* the Twilight children came. 

And sowed and reaped, and lived and died. 
Yes, bought and sold their lives away. 

And when the old Nurse said good-night 
Remembered in the Dusk that they 
Must go to Bed without a Light, 





O N the ragged skirts of the great city, 
where a steady stream of lorries and 
electric cars rumble over the Canal Bridge, 
stand twenty high-fenced, grimy acres of coal 
heaps. 

All day long, year in and year out, the 
blackened and lumbering coal-carts ply back 
and forth between those high-fenced acres of 
bituminous blackness and the switching yard 
of the railway, stopping only at the weigh 
scales as they go. 

As these loaded carts jolt over the stony 
road, a ragged band of cadaverous and 
hungry-eyed urchins, trailing behind them 
ludicrously improvised wheeled things, follow 
them like vultures, waiting to pounce down 
on any loose chunk of coal that may jolt 
unnoticed from the big cart. 

3 


The Loom of Destiny 

At times, when the roads are not so bad 
as usual, they deliberately fling mud and 
stones at the drivers of the carts. When the 
drivers become angry at this, and hurl pieces 
of coal at them, they passively gather up the 
pieces and put them in their two-wheeled 
carts. If one of the band chances to be hit, 
the others fight for the piece while he limps 
away unnoticed. As they rush out, ankle 
deep in mud, it is a sort of standing joke 
and a time-honoured custom for the big 
drivers to cut at the half-bare legs of the 
ragged youngsters with their great keen, 
long-lashed whips. 

The Child was one of this band, and he 
stood in the quiet rain watching for his 
chance. His pudgy face was scratched and 
bore a scar or two. He gazed out abstract- 
edly from the edge of the broken sidewalk, 
oblivious of the rain that was soaking through 
his tattered dress. He could not have been 
much more than four years of age, and cer- 
tainly not five. He had no cart, like his 
more opulent rivals. But, clutched in his 
chubby little dirt-stained hand, he held a 
4 


Premonitions 

rusty, dinted-in tin pail. In the bottom of 
this tin pail were two or three miserable little 
shreds of coal and half a dozen wet chips. 
He knew well enough that he dare not go 
home with them. 

On one foot he wore a toeless button 
shoe, on the other a man’s rubber over-shoe, 
tied at the top with string. From a hole in 
this rubber shoe a small bare toe curled up 
impertinently. His ragged and mud-stained 
plaid skirt did not come quite to his knees, 
and his legs were bare, and chafed, and 
scratched. On the skirt, which he wore 
with supreme unconcern, remained three quite 
unnecessary buttons showing it must once 
have belonged to another — probably some 
departed or grown-up sister. But none of 
all these things seemed to trouble the Child. 

He stood in the rain at the roadside, tran- 
quilly watching with wide, childish eyes, the 
more agile fuel-hunters as they dodged in 
and out, swallow-like, among the passing 
lorries and electric cars, in quest of their 
alluring fragments of coal. 

Occasionally his baby eyes stole furtively 

5 


The Loom of Destiny 

toward a deserted cart, made of a soap-box 
and two wire-bound perambulator wheels. 
In the cart lay several pieces of coal, many 
of them weighing almost a pound. 

Suddenly the jubilant owner dodged back 
to his cart with a great piece of coal, almost the 
size of the Child’s head. The possessor of 
the tin pail eyed the cart-owner with a cer- 
tain reverential awe. Such wealth seemed 
fabulous to him. As the coal king dropped 
his precious burden into the soap-box, a man 
driving past in a yellow dog-cart flung his 
cigar stub into the neighbouring gutter. The 
quick eye of the coal king saw the act, and 
again he dived out into the mud. He picked 
up the cigar stub with exultant fingers and 
carefully wiped it off on his trousers. 

Then he took the one dirty match from 
his pocket and went behind a telegraph pole 
to light up. 

In the meantime the Child’s gaze was 
fastened hungrily on the piece of coal in the 
soap-box. A green light came into his won- 
dering baby eyes. His childish brow puck- 
ered up into a defiant, ominous, anarchistic 
6 


Premonitions 

frown. With twitching fingers he crept step 
by step nearer the soap-box and the precious 
coal chunk. The owner of the cart was still 
struggling with his cigar stub behind the 
telegraph pole. The Child put his hand 
tentatively on the soap-box, and let it rest 
there a moment with subtle nonchalance. 
Then he leaned over it. In another second 
his baby fingers had closed like talons on the 
coveted chunk of coal. Then he backed off, 
cautiously, slily, with his eyes ever on the 
threatening telegraph pole. 

Before he could reach his tin pail on the 
sidewalk the coal king with the cigar stub 
looked up and saw the Child with the piece 
of coal. And he saw that it was his coal. 

He descended on the fleeing Child like a 
whirlwind, swearing and screeching as he 
came. 

The Child clutched the chunk of precious 
wealth to his breast, and ran as he had never 
run before. But it was useless. The owner 
of the cart caught him easily in ten yards. 
He pushed the Child forward on his face, 
and kicked him two or three times in the 


7 


The Loom of Destiny 

stomach. As he went down the Child still 
hugged the piece of coal. The owner of the 
stolen goods stooped down, and tried to force 
it from the little claw-like fingers. They held 
like steel. So the owner of the coal kicked 
the stubborn fingers a few times with his 
boot. Bleeding and discoloured, the baby 
claws at last limply unclosed and straightened 
numbly out. The owner took his coal, gave 
the Child a good-bye kick in the stomach, 
and went back to his soap-box. 

As he passed the Child’s tin pail he kicked 
it vigorously into the road. Then only did 
the Child utter a sound. He groaned weakly 
and sat up in the mud. He saw the coal 
king sitting on his soap-box, luxuriously, 
opulently, puffing at his cigar stub. The 
Child’s heart, of a sudden, seemed to wither 
up with an inexpressible, ominous, helpless 
hate ! 


8 


THE UNDOING OF DINNEY 
CROCKETT 


Tho^ they tykes us out of our gutter 'ome. 
An' scrub till our 'ides is sore. 

Their stinkin' suds won' t myke of a bloke 
W'ot ' e never was afore ! 





D INNEY was born lucky. No one 
knew this better than Dinney him- 
self, who was, in a way, a sort of second 
Dr. Pangloss. 

And, look at it from whatever standpoint 
you will, Dinney had many reasons to be 
happy. In the first place, he was as free as 
the wind, and answerable to no one but his 
own elastic conscience. 

As for his wordly wants, he had plenty to 
eat, for he could live sumptuously on eight 
cents a day. Four cents were really enough, 
on a pinch, but Dinney found that he most 
always got a stomach-ache after a few days 
of four-cent diet. 

In the second place, Dinney was never 
without a place to sleep. In fact, he had 
dozens of them. If it chanced to be winter, 


II 


The Loom of Destiny 

he slumbered on the comfortable iron door 

* 

over the hot-air shaft of the World building, 
vi^here the heat blew out through the iron 
grating in a most delicious way. There, no 
matter how cold it was, he was as contented 
and as much at home as the most luxuriously 
cotted child on Fifth Avenue, And what 
was more, he was not afraid of the dark, and 
the night had no terrors for him. Dinney> 
like all self-respecting members of the pro- 
fession, had an honest and outspoken con- 
tempt for fixed quarters of any sort, and 
openly scoffed at the Newsboys* Home. 
Another point to be remembered was that 
with sleeping apartments at the World build- 
ing, Dinney was always on hand for the 
morning papers, which, as very few in the 
great city ever guessed, came up long before 
the sun itself. 

In the summer, Dinney had the habit of 
going about and nosing out sleeping-places 
at his own sweet will. Often, it is true, 
he had to fight for them, but that fact only 
made him enjoy them all the more. 

So, since Dinney could seU as many as 


12 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

seventy papers of an afternoon, he envied no 
one, shot his craps, tossed his pennies, and 
enjoyed his quiet smoke with the rest of “ de 
gang,” and had no particular kick to register 
against the things that were. 

^ut continuous sleeping in the open, 
the perpetual smoking of cigarettes and the 
vilest of cigar stubs, and the immoderate con- 
sumption of over-ripe fruit, stale sandwiches, 
and well-larded doughnuts, while perhaps 
pleasant enough in their way, do not tend 
either to promote growth or to produce re- 
markable roundness of feature. And for this 
reason all men misunderstood Dinney. 

Yet probably that was why he was so very 
thin. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes were 
hollow, and there was a general air of wist- 
ful hungriness about his woeful little face. 
Dinney knew this well enough ; in fact, he 
inwardly rejoiced over it, being wise enough 
to realise why he could sell seventy papers 
while his more prosperous-looking rivals 
scarcely got rid of their paltry two dozen. 

Indeed, it was nothing else than this in- 
tangible soul-hunger shadowing Dinney’s face 

13 


The Loom of Destiny 

that one day caused a certain sad-eyed woman 
in a carriage to stop at the curb where Dinney 
was selling his papers, and blushingly thrust a 
quarter into his black and dirty hand. 

Dinney’s heart turned on its electrics at 
that. Such things meant something to him, 
for he was always too proud to beg, though 
not to steal. His big eyes lighted up in a 
truly marvellous way, and he, carried for a 
moment off his guard, grinned his genuine 
gratefulness. 

That made the sad-eyed woman in the 
carriage turn to her husband and say : 

“ Did you notice, George ? He has really 
a bee-yew-tiful face ! ” 

They had been watching him for weeks. 

“Yes, I suppose so,” answered the man, 
with feigned disinterestedness, “ if he M only 
wash it now and then.” 

“ Do you know, George, as I pass him 
I often think he — he looks like poor little 
Albert.” 

The man called George had thought so, 
too, but did not say so. Instead, he looked 
up at the roofs of the buildings, for Albert 

14 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

had been their only child, had died but a year 
before, and neither of them could quite forget 
it, as sometimes happens in this world. 

Dinney did not forget that carriage, and it 
must be confessed that he made it a point to 
assume a most ridiculous and priggish expres- 
sion of dejected meekness whenever it passed. 
He knew it would not make the sad-eyed 
woman any happier to feel that he had shot 
craps with every cent of her quarter ! 

But as time went on these little gifts grew 
more and more frequent, and, if kept up, 
would have been the ruin of the best news- 
boy in the Ward. The outcome of it all was 
that the sad-eyed woman came one day and 
drove off with Dinney in her carriage. 

“ George, do you know, I believe that 
child has consumption,” she explained to her 
husband, who was really not a bit astonished 
at her act, “ and I ’ve brought him home, and 
I ’m going to nurse him up for a while ! ” 
George kissed her and called her a silly 
little woman, and said he supposed he M have 
to let her have her own way. It was very 
lonely in that big house. 


The Loom of Destiny 

In fact, it was George himself who led 
Dinney up to the bathroom, showed him how 
to turn on the hot water, and significantly 
advised him not to be afraid of wasting the 
soap. In some unaccountable way George 
found it very pleasant to talk to a child 
again, and answer questions, and explain 
what everything was for. When he went 
downstairs he mildly and tentatively suggested 
that Dinney be taken out to their country 
house with them. He also determined, in 
his own mind, to see about buying Dinney a 
box of tools. 

As for Dinney himself, that strange bath- 
room, with all its pipes and taps and shower 
controller and enamel tub, was a wonder and 
delight. For the fact must be confessed, it 
was Dinney’s first premeditated bath. 

He overflowed the bath tub, spotted the 
woodwork with soap suds, unscrewed one of 
the taps for investigative purposes, and had a 
most delightful time of it. 

When a big, clean-shaven, stately-looking 
man in a bottle green suit with brass buttons 
stepped in, Dinney’s heart jumped into his 

i6 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

mouth, as he thought for a moment that it 
was a policeman. It was only the butler 
with a new suit of clothes for him. Dinney 
eyed them with some curiosity, for it was his 
first acquisition of such a character. He 
ordered the butler to put them down on the 
towel rack, and did it in a tone of authority 
which the butler somewhat resented. Din- 
ney’s heart sank, however, when the man with 
the brass buttons, “at master’s orders,” carried 
away his ragged but beloved old suit, to be in- 
cinerated down in the furnace room. Before 
carrying out those orders, the butler viewed 
Dinney’s tattered raiment with unconcealed 
disgust. He approached the bundle suspi- 
ciously, and carried it at arm’s length, signifi- 
cantly holding his nose as he departed. 

Dinney was quick to see the intended in- 
sult. A cake of wet soap hit the man with 
the brass buttons, hit him squarely on the 
back of the neck. The soap was followed by 
a volley of blasphemy that was, as the butler 
afterwards told the chambermaid, “ fairly 
heart-renderin’ and too awful for respectable 
people to talk on ! ” 

2 


17 


The Loom of Destiny 

■ When Dinney was led downstairs he was 
a very changed boy — that is, of course, 
changed in appearance. His sandy little crop 
of hair was on end, his face was shiny with 
much rubbing, and for the first time in his- 
tory his person was odorous of toilet soap. 
What troubled him most was that his new 
pants were very prickly. 

They were patiently waiting for him, and 
the sad-eyed woman took him on her knee and 
wept over him for a while. Dinney neither 
enjoyed nor understood that, but with him it 
was a law to look meek when in doubt. Yet 
he felt an indefinite unrest and restraint that 
was even more painful than the prickly tor- 
ture of his new pants. 

The sad-eyed woman took it for illness 
(Dinney was as tough as a pine knot !) and 
wept over him once more and asked how he 
would like to be her boy, her very own little 
boy for all the rest of his life. 

That was a question Dinney had not 
thought over. But at that moment he heard 
the rattle of the dinner dishes and caught a 
whiff of the consomme being brought in, so 

i8 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

he, being very much in doubt, looked meeker 
than ever. He next noticed a silver dish on 
the sideboard piled high with big oranges. 
The oranges settled the matter. He was 
hers — hers for all time. 

But he wriggled away, because he did not 
like being hugged. Such things were strange 
to him, he had never been taught to look for 
them, and his heart had never hungered for 
them. But he kept his eye on the dish of 
oranges. During all this George coughed 
once or twice, and said Dinney had the mak- 
ing of a fine boy in him, a very fine boy 
indeed ! 

So Dinney, who had beheld nothing but 
brick and stone all his life, was carried away 
into the country. Never before had he seen 
hot corn, the same as the Italians sold on the 
street corners, growing on long stalks. Nor 
had he ever before seen apples hanging on 
trees, or acres and acres of green grass, or 
flowers, millions and millions of flowers, all 
growing wild on the ground, like a lot of 
cobble-stones. It filled him with a silent 
wonder. 


19 


The Loom of Destiny 

The little, sad-eyed woman and George 
talked over Dinney’s future, and planned out 
his life for him, and nudged each other and 
nodded their heads significantly at each little 
sign from the child as he gazed out wide- 
eyed on a new world. 

But at the end of the first day on the farm 
a change crept over Dinney. He did not 
romp laughing-eyed across the fields, nor did 
he gather hands full of flowers, as they had 
ex]^ected, or sit listening to the birds singing 
in the trees. 

He hung disconsolately about the stables, 
with his hands in his pockets, asking the 
coachman endless questions about the polish- 
ing of harness and the breeding of horses. 
He caught and made captive a stray collie 
pup, and shut it up in one of the empty oat 
bins, and then chased the ducks for one busy 
hour. When stopped at this by the gardener, 
he fell out of an apple-tree or two, and then, 
wrapped in sudden thought, wondered what 
Gripsey was doing at home just at that 
moment. Then he fell to ruminating as to 
whether or not the evening papers were out. 


20 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

and wistfully told the man called George all 
about “ de gang,” and the lives they lived 
and the things they did. 

Then, being unable to fathom his indefinite 
and unknown unhappiness, he wailed aloud 
that he was hungry. The sad-eyed woman 
fed him until she feared he would burst, and 
said the air was doing him a world of good. 
Dinney had been used to eating whenever the 
spirit moved him, and it seemed to him a 
ridiculous custom to sit down and devour 
things at stated times, whether you were 
hungry or not. 

But after his meal his melancholy returned 
to him. What with the prickliness of his 
new clothes and his secret desire to indulge 
in a quiet smoke, he suffered untold agonies. 

In his loneliness and misery he disappeared 
stableward, and was not seen again until 
dinner-time. 

The poor little sad-eyed woman was wor- 
ried to distraction about him. When he 
shambled back to the house she called him 
over to her and took him up on her knee, and 
petted him as few mothers pet even their 


The Loom of Destiny 

own son. But it was all lost on Dinney. He 
squirmed and was unhappy. 

“ What is it, dear ? Are you not well ? ” 
she asked, with a real and beautiful tender- 
ness. Dinney was silent. 

“ Are you not happy here, dear ? ” the 
little woman asked once more, putting all the 
pent-up love of her childless life in one 
mother’s kiss on the boy’s flushed forehead. 

It was too much ! Dinney broke loose 
and sprang away like a young tiger. 

“ Gordammit ! lee’ me alone ! ” he screamed ; 
“ lee’ me alone ! ” His face was contorted 
with a sort of blind fury. “ I ’m sick of all 
dis muggin’, an’ dis place, an — an every- 
t’ing else, and I want to go home, see ! I 
want to go home — I want to go home ! ” 

He wailed it out, over and over again, and 
the tears streamed down his face. 

“ But — but, Dinney, are n’t you happy 
here ? ” 

“ No, I ain’t,” almost shrieked the child, 
in a passion of homesickness, “ an’ I ’m tired 
o’ dis bloody place, an’ I want to go home — 
I want to go home ! ” 


22 


The Undoing of Dinney Crockett 

To his lifelong shame, Dinney broke 
down and bawled like any baby in arms. 

The childless mother covered her eyes 
with her handkerchief and wept silently. 
The man called George walked nervously up 
and down the room, and then looked absently 
out over the fields of ripening wheat, golden 
in the sunlight of the late afternoon. 

There was silence for several minutes, 
and then the man said, and it seemed almost 
resignedly : 

“ Very well, Dinney, if you really want 
to, I ’ll take you back to the city with me in 
the morning.” 

Could it have been a sob that choked his 
voice ? Dinney neither knew nor cared. 
He wiped his eyes and seemed to smell once 
more the smell of the crowded city street, 
and to hear the music of a thousand hurrying 
wheels. 


23 



THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT 


They seen as we was gutter scum. 

An* they said as we was bad ; 

An* they knowed th* soul of a gutter snipe 
Was th* on*y soul we * ad ! 






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H e was by no means the worst boy in 
the ward, though the charge was 
often flung at him. Really bad boys lived 
all about him, but their ways were not his 
ways. 

Such being so, there was great rejoicing 
and glee when he fell. It all came about by 
the merest accident. He had learned his 
Golden Text by heart, had his penny for col- 
lection in his pocket, and his Sunday-school 
lesson, about Joseph, at his finger tips. And 
it might never have happened but that at the 
corner of the street his quick ears caught a 
whiff of band music. 

He stopped and listened. Yes, it was 
most unmistakably a band — no, two, three, 
four of them, all playing at once. The sul- 
len, heavy Sunday-school look went out of 
27 



The Loom of Destiny 

the boy’s face. He forgot the discomfort of 
his Sunday clothes. It must be the soldiers 
on church parade ! Then the sound grew 
like the voice of a thousand sirens singing 
in his ears. 

Still he faltered. He remembered the 
Sunday-school collection, and his story of 
Joseph, and the cold, green eyes, haunting 
and relentless, that watched him each morn- 
ing to see that he did not take more than his 
share of porridge. He was dreadfully afraid 
of those cold, green eyes. But the fates were 
against Duncan Stewart McDougall. 

At that moment a new sound fell on his 
childish ears. It was the unfamiliar note of 
bagpipes, the mingled chant and drone of the 
band of Highland pipers. At that moment 
it was not the smell of the crowded slums 
that stole into his little Scottish nostrils. It 
was heather — the scent of heather, remem- 
bered as a dream of years ago. 

The sound awoke something dormant, an- 
cestral, unconquerable, in his McDougall 
veins. Then it was he remembered watch- 
ing Sandy McPherson, the Holland’s coach- 
28 


The Fly in the Ointment 

man, pipe-clay his leggings while he talked of 
the “ Chur-r-rch Par-r-ade a’ Sabbath week.” 

But still he faltered. He could not get 
the thought of those green eyes out of his 
mind. Then, all of a sudden, far up the 
street, he caught a glimpse of bonnets and 
kilts. Bonnets and kilts ! And Scotland 
half a world away ! It was a sight for sore 
eyes, if those same eyes had once seen the 
hills and valleys of the Highlands. After 
one furtive glance down his own little street, 
the carefully folded lesson leaf was flung into 
the gutter, and he was piking up the avenue 
as fast as his thin legs could carry him. He 
headed them ofF in six blocks, and fell in, 
panting and perspiring, with the Victoria 
Rifles Band. One or two of the soldiers 
kicked him surreptitiously, but he did not 
even know it. He was following the band ! 
The blood that throbbed through his thin legs 
had never run so fast. He was drunk, dead 
drunk, with the music. Thrills went cours- 
ing up and down his backbone, and he 
seemed to be walking on air. How or why 
it was he could not understand ; but on and 
29 


The Loom of Destiny 

on he went. For seven enchanted miles he 
stuck to his band. His one sorrow was that 
his short legs could not keep in time with the 
music. But he could nearly almost do it, 
and by a sort of dot and carry one, he made 
a rhythm of his own in the marches. He 
pulled his peaked, puny little stooped shoul- 
ders back, and thrust out his narrow chest. 
He all but burst the one button from his 
threadbare coat with its neat patches at the 
elbows. 

And all the while he marched, hobbled, 
stumbled on, drinking in the martial sound. 
An occasional policeman would try to kick 
him away, but he dodged in between the 
lines, where the soldiers came to look upon 
him as a joke. They poked him in the ribs 
with their white-gloved fists, in brutal good 
nature, but he did not feel it. He followed 
on ecstatically, with his stern little freckled 
Scottish face and his puckered-out chest, caus- 
ing many a smile along the line of march. 

That day he was not afraid to face the 
biggest policeman on the force. By this time 
there were big water blisters on his heels, 

30 


The Fly in the Ointment 

and one stocking was hanging down. But 
that military band was all he saw or heard 
When he got big like Sandy McPherson he 
was going to be a soldier. He was going to 
bayonet Indians and cannonade cities, and 
shoot people dead, right through their stomach 
and insides, and save the general’s life at the 
end of the battle, and get sixteen gold medals, 
and then — 

But the boy, of a sudden, started, paled, 
and wilted. The music withered out, the 
soldiers faded. The gleam left his eye, and 
the martial poise ebbed from his fallen 
shoulders. Peering at him from the curb, he 
saw a pair of cold, green, relentless eyes ! 
The glory and the dream were gone ! 

At the next street he fell away from the 
lines, cut across five side streets, hobbled 
home, and waited for the green eyes to come 
back. After that, he knew what would hap- 
pen. The green eyes came. When the 
flogging was over he went up to bed without 
supper. He did n’t care very much if it 
really was true that he was going to be a 
bad man and a drunkard as his father had 


31 


The Loom of Destiny 

been. He supposed the green eyes ought to 
know. But before he fell asleep he showed 
the Baby, with the broom handle, how to 
bayonet Indians ; whereat the Baby bawled, 
and she of the green eyes called up the little 
stairway. Trembling, the boy crept into 
bed. He felt sore all over. 

Very late that night he heard the green 
eyes come in and take the penny from his 
pocket. She held the lamp to his face, but 
his eyes remained shut. Yet he felt those 
green eyes burning into him and withering 
his soul. • 


32 


THE IRON AGE 


They ^ ad a pry er for our ' eathen 'earts 
As they washed us down with suds. 

An* thort as we * ad a bran* new soul 

W* en they * d burnt our * Ounds-Ditch duds. 



# 


.Ik'w. 





P EGGY was certainly a tomboy. She 
openly scoffed at ‘‘ The Pansy Stories ” 
and “ Little Wives ” and “ The Wide, Wide 
World,” but strange to say, devoured all such 
books as The Boys’ Own Annual,” “ Dead- 
wood Dick,” “ The Headless Horseman ; or 
The Terror of Tamaraska Gulch,” and any 
literature on Indians, dire adventure, and 
bloodshed which came into her hands. 

And many tears were shed over poor Miss 
Peggy, and many were the solemn and sup- 
posedly impressive lectures read to her. But 
for all those lectures she continued to slide 
down the banisters, and openly whistle before 
company. In fact Miss Peggy did not ap- 
prove of company, and was never happier 
than when staring the rector’s nervous wife 
out of countenance. 


35 


The Loom of Destiny 

Peggy took an unholy delight in tumbling 
on the hay in the stables, though Hawkins, 
the coachman, always was at pains to point 
out to her that ’orses could never heat ’ay as 
was trampled on, and artfully, but uselessly, 
insinuated that a species of horrible green 
snake abounded in the mows. 

She killed mice and toads without a jot of 
fear, and could whittle with a jack-knife like a 
boy. When she cut her finger she tore a 
piece from the hem of her petticoat, bound 
up the wound, and went on with her work. 
She had climbed every tree in the garden, as 
one might easily know from the tell-tale holes 
always in her stockings. She also had a pas- 
sion for scaling the grapevine arbour, against 
orders, because from the top she could look 
down into the next yard and make faces at 
the old gardener there, who was under dark 
suspicion of having poisoned a Shanghai 
rooster that had been Peggy’s dearly beloved 
pet for one happy year. 

Teddie, or rather Master Edward Branbury 
Bronson, who lived two doors distant, was 
her bosom friend and confidant, and poor 

36 


The Iron Age 

Teddie it was she slapped, and bullied, and 
berated, and ordered about in a way that was 
wonderful to behold. But Teddie’s mother 
was warned by kindly and interested neigh- 
bours that the little boy ought not to come in 
contact with such a wild and unruly child as 
Peggy. So she straightway forbade the weep- 
ing and broken-hearted Teddie to speak to 
his old playmate, whose parents, she sighed, 
had utterly ruined the poor child’s character. 

But Peggy made a telephone of a ball of 
waxed string and two tomato tins, and after 
much climbing of walls and fences and ruin- 
ing of skirts, it was duly stretched from gar- 
den to garden. 

Over this telephone the parted lovers regis- 
tered vows of constancy and carried on the 
most delightful and absorbing conversations. 
And Teddie might never have felt his exile 
had not the old gardener in the intervening 
yard discovered the string and innocently 
made use of it for tying up his currant 
bushes. For this unpardonable act the old 
gardener was accosted daily and vindictively 
with mysterious and unaccountable volleys of 
37 


The Loom of Destiny 

stones from one side of the garden and green 
apples from the other. The stones, of 
course, came from Peggy’s side. Miss 
Peggy never believed in doing things by 
halves. 

Then followed three weeks of terrible lone- 
liness, which might have ended either tragic- 
ally or in an out-and-out elopement, had not 
the unstable Peggy purchased a brindled street 
pup for eight pennies, three silver spoons 
carried away from the table for purposes of 
exchange in general, and the gardener’s 
wheelbarrow, whose disappearance, by the 
way, Hawkins could never account for. 

But the brindled pup was currish and cow- 
ardly and mongrel to the backbone, and after 
being overfed and kicked and scuffed and 
dragged reluctantly about by Peggy for one 
week, he made his timely escape and was 
seen no more. 

Then Peggy fell on evil days, and every- 
thing in some way went wrong with her. If 
she was locked up in the Blue Room she drew 
figures on the wall paper, and if she was sent 
to bed without dinner — for Peggy dined at 

38 


The Iron Age 

night — she would groan so loudly and so 
eloquently with stomach-aches that her father 
would end up by bringing her a load of good 
things, for which she would fall on his neck 
and kiss him a dozen times under his prickly 
old moustache and make him sit down on the 
bed and tell her about Custer’s Last Stand, 
while she devoured the last bite and shook 
the crumbs out of the sheets and turned over 
and went to sleep quite contented and quite 
unpunished. More than once, therefore, 
poor Peggy’s mamma wept long and bitterly 
at her child’s unregenerate ways, while Peg- 
gy’s father admitted she was a little she- 
devil, and ought to be shut up in a convent, 
or sent somewhere. Just where he did not 
know. 

So when Peggy’s Aunt Frances came to 
their house for a month or two she was 
looked upon as the god from the machine in 
the destiny of Peggy. Frances was just out 
of her teens, true as steel, and the one being 
whom Peggy looked up to in awe. This 
was, as she frankly admitted to Ali Baba, 
because her Aunt Frankie was beautiful, like 
39 


The Loom of Destiny 

the angels in the church windows that always 
filled her with a mysterious veneration, and 
also because her Aunt Frankie liked Ali 
Baba. Ali Baba he had always been called, 
ever since he told Peggy the stories of the 
Forty Thieves, though his right name was 
Dr. Thomas Etherington, which did n*t 
count with Peggy. 

Now, Ali Baba had been wise in his gen- 
eration and had realised that he must have 
Peggy as his friend at court. 

When candies and boxes of flowers came 
to the house they were always for Miss 
Peggy. The candies she gorged herself 
upon, and the flowers she flung away, not 
knowing they were afterwards surreptitiously 
gathered up by her Aunt Frankie, for reasons 
poor little Peggy could never know and per- 
haps never understand. 

To make sure of such a powerful ally, Ali 
Baba made open and uninterrupted love to 
Peggy, who in return daily soiled his collars, 
rumpled up his hair, went through his pock- 
ets, climbed on his shoulders, and in time 
even forgot to think of her long-lost Teddie. 

40 


The Iron Age 

The woman who secretly treasured Ali 
Baba’s flowers was a wise little lady, and 
understood, of course, and said nothing. 

But as time went on, one fine day she and 
her Ali Baba fell out, as all young people 
will. Peggy may or may not have been at 
the bottom of it, for the working of a wo- 
man’s heart is an inscrutable mystery to 
man. 

‘‘ Good-night — and good-bye,” cried Ali 
Baba’s sweetheart imperiously, through her 
tears. ‘‘ I can — I can never see you again. 
Hereafter,” with a pitiful little gulp, “ here- 
after our paths must part. And if you call 
I shall not be in — there ! ” 

“ Very well, dear, if you ’re bound to be 
silly,” said Ali Baba, cheerily. ‘‘ But I ’m 
coming up to play with Peggy every day. 
Now if I loved you, Peggy, you would n’t 
throw me over, would you, little one ? ” 

A sudden pallor swept over the listening 
child’s face. Poor little Peggy, she did n’t 
know that the tenderness of tone in that 
question was meant for other ears. She 
clung to Ali Baba in a moment’s passion of 

41 


The Loom of Destiny 

affection. Then she slipped away from him, 
in shamed silence, as a woman might. 

‘‘ And shan’t we have fun though, eh, 
Peggy ? ” said Ali Baba. 

Peggy looked at the other girl, and saw 
the unspoken misery on her face. Then 
Ali Baba caught her up in his big arms and 
she forgot again. 

“ Won’t we, though ! And Hawkins 
won’t be here, and we ’ll play trolley cars in 
the brougham, and we ’ll unbury the dead cat 
and have another funeral, and you can throw 
green apples at the Browns’ gardener.” 

“ And we ’ll play hare and hounds,” said 
Ali Baba, “ and piggie-in-the-hole, and French 
and English, and — and all the rest ! And 
you ’ll be my girl after this, my sure-enough 
girl, and never go back on me, and you ’ll 
wait for me, and we ’ll marry each other 
some day and be happy ever afterwards.” 

When Ali Baba went away, P^ggy sat 
wrapped in thought for some time. A new 
world had opened up for her. She sighed. 

“You don’t really care, do you, Aunt 
Frankie ? ” she asked with great gravity. 

42 


The Iron Age 

The woman, who was gazing absently 
out of the window, shook her head, and 
seemed to swallow something that stuck in 
her throat, 

“Teddie was such a baby, you know. 
Aunt Frankie! And you won’t care if I 
don’t ask you to come when we unbury the 
cat ? ” 

Again the other shook her head, but this 
time with a smile. 

“ And you don’t mind me being his sure- 
enough girl after this, do you ? ” Then 
there was a pause. ‘‘ It ’s just as well, you 
know. Aunt Frankie, because he often said 
he ’d wait and marry me if I truly wanted 
him to. And Ali Baba, dear old Ali Baba, 
is so nice.” There was another long pause. 
“Aunt Frankie, don’t you think it’s — it’s 
piggy of mamma to keep me in these hor’- 
ble short skirts ? ” 

But the other went away without answer- 
ing, and left the child still wrapped in thought. 

When Ali Baba came as he had promised, 
Peggy’s aunt had locked herself in her room, 
and Ali Baba accordingly did not play with 
43 


The Loom of Destiny 

as light a heart as usual. And Peggy, too, 
was not the old Peggy. A most wonderful 
change had taken place. The holes in her 
stockings were all carefully mended, and 
Susette, Peggy’s French maid, had been com- 
manded to lay out an entire clean dress for her, 
a command unique in the regime of Susette. 

The second day that Ali Baba came there 
was a still more mysterious change in Peggy. 
She carried her hands awkwardly. When 
Ali Baba kissed her there was a tingle in the 
touch — the first her childish lips had ever 
felt. She wore her hated new boots that 
squeaked, and Susette had been made to sew 
an extension on her meagre petticoat. For 
the first time in her life she had felt ashamed 
of her legs. Her hair was slicked down with 
water, and she was silent and ill at ease. 

She did not try to climb up Ali Baba that 
day as if he were an apple-tree, and when 
he called her Peggy she told him with great 
gravity that Peggy was a baby’s name, and 
that she wished he would call her Marjorie. 

That day Peggy’s mamma saw her walk- 
ing sedately down the stairs, without so much 
44 


The Iron Age 

as touching the banister, and wondered if 
the poor child was ill again. 

The next time Ali Baba came, Peggy sat 
waiting with her hands in her lap. She had 
stolen twelve of Susette’s brass hairpins, and 
had done her frowsy little curls up in a ridicu- 
lous bob on the top of her head. Her heart 
was heavy, nevertheless, for she had found 
out for the first time that she had freckles — 
hundreds of them. 

When Ali Baba came in he was in un- 
usual good spirits, for he picked up Miss 
Peggy and impertinently kissed her on her 
little freckled nose and asked where her Aunt 
Frankie was. 

Peggy resented that familiarity of address, 
whereupon Ali Baba kissed her again, and told 
her not to get priggish. 

Peggy stamped her foot with rage. She 
would let Ali Baba know she was not a baby. 

Ali Baba laughed and took her struggling 
in his arms, as he would hold an infant. 

I hate you, I hate you ! ” she cried 
hotly, as Ali Baba laughingly made his 
escape. 


45 


The Loom of Destiny 

That night some one came down to dinner 
wearing a ring with one big shiny diamond 
in it, and an unusual pinkiness in her cheeks. 
Peggy did not understand its exact meaning, 
but she knew it must have come from Ali Baba. 
The thought filled her with a vague unrest, 
for Ali Baba scarcely spoke to her all dinner- 
time. She was silent and miserable as the meal 
went on. Her mother and father exchanged 
glances as they noted the change. Miss 
Peggy was at last learning to act more like 
a little lady at the table ! But there was a 
mystery and constraint about that dinner that 
the child did not understand. She felt very 
lonesome. Ali Baba had forgotten the woman 
he had promised to marry if she would wait 
for him ! 

“ When are you going to make your peace 
with Peggy ? ” she heard her Aunt Frankie 
laughingly ask Ali Baba. 

“ Oh, I ’ll have to do that when I ’m her 
cross old uncle, shan’t I, Peggy ? ” laughed 
back Ali Baba. ‘‘ But Peggy is n’t the same 
little girl I used to know. The Boogie man 
must have carried off my little Peggy ! ” 

46 


The Iron Age 

With one sickening flash the truth dawned 
on Peggy. Her uncle ! Her uncle ! Her 
heart jumped up into her throat, and in her 
agony she tore the lace Susette had sewn so 
carefully on her dress — sewn on for him ! 
The first petal had fallen from the rose of 
her childhood. 

“ Why, Peggy, dear, what is it ? ” asked 
her mother in alarm. 

Peggy did not and could not answer. 
A new and terrible sense of desertion and 
loneliness was eating at her heart. A blind- 
ing mist came before her eyes, and, to her 
unutterable shame, she wept — broke down 
and cried like a baby before Ali Baba and 
all the others. 

She shook off the arm her mother had 
slipped about her, pushed over the cream 
pitcher, flung her own pink plate on the 
floor, turned from the table and fled from 
the room. She did not care where, so long 
as it was out of the house and out of his 
sight. 

“ How — how extraordinary ! ” gasped Ali 
Baba. 


47 


The Loom of Destiny 

The butler was smiling behind his hand. 
Peggy saw it, and as she went past she kicked 
him vigorously and viciously on the shins. 

‘‘ Poor Peggy,” said the woman with the 
diamond ring, as she held Ali Baba’s hand 
under the table. She understood. 

Up in the hay-mow, to the consternation 
of the listening Hawkins, Peggy was crying 
as if her heart was broken for all time. 

“Yes,” the child’s mother was saying 
over the coffee, “ Peggy is just at the awk- 
ward age, is n’t she ? ” 


48 


THE KING WHO LOST HIS 
CROWN 


An' th' lydies cooed, ** O th' ayngel things ! 

An' ' ow ' andsome in their cl'oes!" 

But ' Arry, my eye, you knows 'ow far 
In us th' ayngel goes / 


s 




tr 


A 



I T was certainly the wonder of the neigh- 
bourhood. Its first appearance had 
been the one event of the year, and a flutter 
of excitement ran through the Street as its 
glories were dilated on from doorway to door- 
way down the little colony. Never, since 
the police had raided Ching Lung’s laundry, 
had such excitement been known. 

It was nothing but a shop sign, made up 
of white, or almost white, lettering, on a sky- 
blue background, and announced in char- 
acters of fitting size that Mrs. Doyle was a 
dealer in candies, home-made taffies, confec- 
tionery, tobacco, cigarettes, and sundries. 
The “ sundries ” was a mystery to most of 
the admirers of the sign, but they assumed it 
stood for something no less delicious than 
caramels. 

51 


The Loom of Destiny 

For months the dingy little shop had stood 
empty. When Mrs. Doyle was found mys- 
teriously occupying it one morning, its doors 
and windows were watched as only these 
things should be watched at such a time. 
A person can’t be too careful about these 
new-comers. 

The watchers saw a transformation take 
place. Boxes of highly coloured candies ap- 
peared in the show window, together with 
bags of molasses pop-corn, and square tins of 
brown taffy, and rows of chocolate mice with 
elastic tails. There also appeared a box of 
pink and green marbles, and a wire basket 
with seven wizened lemons in it. 

The inhabitants of the Street viewed all 
these things with wonder and delight. At 
times during the day at least a dozen admir- 
ing noses were flattened inquisitively against 
the little panes of the candy shop window. 

Naturally, then, when Master Thomas 
Doyle made his first appearance on the Street 
with the other children he was at once 
surrounded by an admiring and solicitous 
crowd, who, he was astonished to find, took 

52 


The King who Lost His Crown 

a most kindly and unexpected interest in 
him. 

In fact many sly advances were made 
toward Tommie. He was given a broken 
top and a handful of marbles, and Jimmie 
Birkins asked if Tommie wanted to see their 
cat when it was being poisoned. It was felt 
to be a good thing to know a boy who lived 
in a candy shop. All of their advances 
Tommie Doyle received with fitting reserve 
and dignity. 

When he was subtly questioned about the 
amount of candy and taffy he was allowed to 
devour each day, he curled his lip with care- 
less contempt. 

‘‘ Candy ? Ugh ! I ’m sick and tired of 
candy, I am ! ” 

Never in all time had such a thing been 
known before. A chorus of wondering 
“ Oh’s ” went up from the astonished circle. 

“All I ’ve got to do,” said Tommie, with 
a proper sense of his own importance, “ is 
to pick up a pan and sit down and eat it. 
But I like chocolate mice the best. They’re 
great, ain’t they ? I just had four or five 
S3 


The Loom of Destiny 

of ’em before I came out ! ” he added with a 
fine nonchalance. 

The circle of listeners nudged one another 
knowingly, and shook their heads. 

Their wondering admiration seemed to 
encourage the boy who lived in the candy 
shop. The glory of his position had never 
before^ dawned upon him. 

‘‘ Why,” he went on, “ my ma says kind 
of cross, ‘Tommie, you ain’t had your ’lasses 
taffy to-day ! Y ou set right down and eat 
that pan before you go out and play !’ And 
she gets real mad if she sees me tryin’ to go 
out without eatin’ a pan, or what ’s left, so ’s 
she can wash it up again.” 

The circle gasped. “ When ’re yer goin’ 
to bring us out a pan ? ” a small boy at 
the back of the crowd piped up. They all 
pretended to be justly shocked at such 
forwardness. 

“Why, any time at all, I guess, if you 
want some real bad. And some chocolate 
mice, too, eh?” said Tommie, pointing out 
the box of rodent delicacies. 

A dozen mouths watered at the thought. 

54 


The King who Lost His Crown 

They fawned over him, and showed him how 
to play craps, though not for keeps. And 
as for Tommie, he was drunk with the con- 
sciousness of his strange new power. He 
walked with a sort of lordly independence 
among the children of the Street, for he saw 
he was already established in the position he 
felt he ought to occupy. He blushingly 
remembered that he had bawled for a day 
when the moving was first begun, but now 
he was a king. And he had not had to fight 
one single fight ! 

In fact, little gifts were urged upon Tom- 
mie, which he took with assumed reluctance, 
and tiny girls made hungry and melting eyes 
at him after feasting, in fancy, before that 
ever-alluring window. This was especially 
so in the case of Maggie Reilly, whose affairs 
of the heart had been both numerous and 
noted. 

Often Tommie would come out of the 
shop smacking his lips with great relish, and 
say that he could still taste that last choco- 
late mouse. Day by day, too, he recounted 
the amount of taffy and chocolate mice his 
55 


The Loom of Destiny 

mother made him consume, and told how she 
felt hurt if he did n’t seem to enjoy his allow- 
ance. And week by week hope and hunger 
increased among the ranks of his army of 
worshippers. But neither candy nor talFy 
nor mice were forthcoming, and at last 
sounds of doubt and dissension arose. All 
day long a hungry-eyed group of children 
hung about the shop window and gazed upon 
the delicacies within, but never were they 
invited inside by the obdurate Tommie. 
Two glass jars, one of peppermints and one 
of red wintergreen drops, appeared in the 
window and added to the seductiveness of the 
forbidden paradise, and one week later these 
were followed by a pasteboard box filled with 
all-day-suckers. 

Two days after the appearance of the box 
of all-day-suckers Maggie Reilly came into 
the possession of two pennies. It was believed 
by some that such wealth was not come by 
honestly, but this statement was frowned 
down, not for any faith in Maggie Reilly’s 
honesty, but simply because curiosity con- 
quered all other feelings 


The King who Lost His Crown 

With these two pennies she invaded the 
sacred realms of Tommie Doyle’s candy shop. 
After much debate it had been decided that 
she should be accompanied by Lou Birkins, 
her bosom friend. The little bell rang with 
an awe-inspiring clatter as the two fortunate 
ones entered the sacred portal. Once inside 
they gazed with wide eyes and open mouth 
on the strange treasures that lay before them. 

In a way, the sight was disappointing. 
Mrs. Doyle was scrubbing the floor when 
they stumbled and shuffled in, but she wiped 
her hands and arms on her mat apron, and 
got up from her knees when she saw they 
were customers. She was a thin, gaunt 
woman with a shrill voice, and she fright- 
ened Maggie Reilly so much that that startled 
young lady did n’t know whether she wanted 
wintergreen drops or chocolate mice. She 
finally solved the problem by taking con- 
versation lozenges, six for a penny. 

While these were being counted out the 
voice of Tommie Doyle came from the little 
room at the back of the shop. 

“ Ma, why can’t I scrape out the big 

57 


The Loom of Destiny 

pot ? ” The voice was tremulous with 
tearful entreaty. 

“ Because you can’t, that’s why, Tommie 
Doyle ! ” shrilly, sternly, called back his mother 
from the shop. 

“But I ain’t had a taste of taffy since 
we ’ve come in this new shop ! ” wailed back 
the boy. 

“ And you ain’t likely to get none, neither ! ” 
said his mother impassively, as she put the two 
pennies in an empty cigar-box placed on the 
shelf for that purpose. 

The two visitors looked at each other with 
significant glances. The revelation had come ! 
Tommie Doyle was a sham and an impostor. 
Conversation lozenges were forgotten, and 
the little bell over the shop door had not 
ceased ringing before the news was spreading 
like wildfire down the Street. 

When Tommie Doyle stepped out of the 
shop that afternoon, smacking his lips and 
rubbing his stomach, a jeer of laughter 
sounded through the crowded street. 

“ Ma, why can’t I scrape out the big 
pot ? ” mimicked Maggie Reilly with fiend- 

58 


The King who Lost His Crown 

ish delight, for she felt that her feelings had 
been outraged by Tommie in days gone by. 
A score of voices took up the cry, “ Ma, 
why can’t I scrape out the big pot ? ” and the 
taunt went echoing down the Street. 

The boy who lived in the candy shop 
learned that day, in the deepest depths of his 
heart, that the way of the transgressor is 
hard ! 


59 



/ 


1 


\ 





LIFE’S LOADED DIE 


For w*ot*s bin bred in these 'ere bones. 
In these 'ere bones was bred ; 

An' you an' me is gutter scum 
Till you an' me is dead. 













“ 1 jIFF a cop in de eye, if yer lookin’ fer 

1 3 trouble, or t’row yerself under de 
cable, but don’t youse ever give our Shanghai 
de stunt ! ” \vas a saying on the East Side 
long held to be oracular in its unchallenged 
wisdom. But the East Side in general and 
this same Shanghai Sharkey in particular had 
never heard a still older saying about giving 
a dog a bad name and then hanging it. The 
Shanghai Sharkey, like all small boys, had 
an honest and outspoken contempt for any- 
thing in the shape of proverb, parable, or 
text, which same smacked suspiciously of 
Sunday School and things hateful to the eyes 
of the urban ungodly, and were, therefore, 
religiously eschewed. 

Yet it was the little germ of truth hidden 
in the core of that old platitude which made 

63 


The Loom of Destiny 

this one boy just what he was. When 
Destiny flung the Shanghai Sharkey into the 
world she threw a loaded die on the board, 
for any New York boy born of the house 
and name of Sharkey must know that he 
has a name to live up to and a reputation to 
sustain. 

Timmie did not claim direct relationship 
with the one and only Sharkey, but very early 
in life he found that the mere name itself was 
a standing challenge to fight all new-comers. 
If the Shanghai Sharkey came home three 
days in the week with black eyes and the 
nosebleed, his father, who was a longshore- 
man by profession and a gin-drinker by occu- 
pation, was in the habit of saying that it was 
not the kid’s fault, proudly protesting that his 
son was a regular chip of the old block ! 
Timmie’s father himself had been somewhat 
of a boxer in his day, and even now, when 
his powers were in the sere and yellow leaf, 
he at times showed the weight of his brawny 
arm. This was true especially when his 
thin-faced, sickly wife, who sewed ten weary 
hours a day, refused to hand over the last 
64 


Life’s Loaded Die 

dime in the house, that he might cheer his 
drooping spirits with another drop or two of 
Holland gin. Timmie himself, in his in- 
fancy, it must be confessed, had been a 
silent and sickly baby, with his mother's 
meek grey eyes and an inordinate love for a 
certain tattered and bodiless old rag doll. It 
was this disappointment in his son and heir, 
Timmie's father stoutly protested, that had 
first driven him to drink. 

But if Timmie's progenitor had at first 
beheld these things with undisguised anger 
and disgust, he vigorously undertook the 
child's reformation, almost, in fact, before he 
was weaned. The boy was taught, by the 
time he was able to walk, how to guard, feint, 
clinch, and break away. At the same time 
he was in the habit of showing him, in a 
way that made poor Timmie's mother weep 
for many an anxious hour, how a Sharkey 
should be able to stand punishment. 

So by the time Timmie was old enough 
to venture into the open street he was mas- 
ter of his two childish fists, and what was 
more, he knew it. That knowledge is a 
5 65 


The Loom of Destiny- 

terrible and a dangerous thing in the mind 
of a boy. 

It was on his very first day in the open 
that he won for himself the name of Shang- 
hai, or rather, the Shanghai Sharkey, — a 
name which stuck to him through a thousand 
battles. 

He was, it is said, thus aptly christened 
because of his ragged stockings and tattered 
shoes, which, in the activities of warfare, 
looked strangely like the feathered limbs of 
some uncouth Shanghai rooster. 

When the victorious boy, very bloody and 
very white, was helped home after his first 
fight, his exultant father’s joy knew no 
bounds. The child himself, in his pride, 
accordingly forgot about his bleeding lip, 
and wondered why his mother should sit by 
the window and cry. That night, when her 
husband was asleep, she stole out of bed and 
crept stealthily over to the child’s little 
couch, listening anxiously in the darkness to 
hear if he was still breathing. Timmie, 
whose head was beating like a drum, was 
awake, and saw her, but said nothing. 

66 


Life’s Loaded Die 

Once honoured by such a name, the 
Shanghai Sharkey found he had, indeed, a repu- 
tation to live up to. Thereafter a new boy 
dared not venture into the remotest bound- 
aries of the Ward, and expect to dwell there- 
in, without first being duly challenged and 
fought by the Shanghai. This cost the chal- 
lenger a tooth or two, numerous scars, and a 
periodically blackened eye, but many battles, 
in time, taught him not only how to endure, 
but even how to elude, the severe punish- 
ment which customarily comes with all such 
encounters. The result was that the new 
boy was usually defeated, while the victo- 
rious Timmie went home each time with less 
blood wiped from his nose by his ragged 
coat sleeve. Each engagement added one 
more to that ever swelling army of urchins 
who came to look upon the Shanghai Sharkey 
and his prowess with admiring and reveren- 
tial eyes. And Timmie’s father hit him 
enthusiastically on the back and said with 
pride that he was a bloody little devil. 

So in time it came about that there was 
not a boy on the East Side who did not fear 
67 


The Loom of Destiny 

and envy this lion-hearted and tiger-toothed 
hero of a hundred fights. Nor was there a 
girl within twelve squares of the Sharkey 
residence (and strangely unpretentious was 
that residence for such an eminent inhabi- 
tant ! ) who did not furtively cast shy glances 
at the Shanghai. To be the “ steady ” of 
one by the name of Sharkey was something 
for future generations eternally to dream of, 
and talk over, and wonder at ! 

Notwithstanding these seductive advances, 
the Shanghai Sharkey, as a fighting man, 
publicly and with fitting dignity, proclaimed 
that it was not for him to waste his time and 
goodly strength on women folks. Far from 
it. At his father’s solicitation he beguiled 
Mike Donovan, who kept the “ Lincoln 
Saloon ” on the next corner, to give him cer- 
tain private tips on left hooks and advancing, 
— points on which even Timmie’s father 
confessed a latter-day ignorance. Mike 
Donovan had been a boxer of repute in his 
youth, and even at the present time three 
stoop-shouldered young men, wearing gold 
eye-glasses, came to him twice a week and 
68 


Life’s Loaded Die 

were regularly sent home with puffed cheeks 
and watery eyes. The Shanghai Sharkey, 
for his lessons in the manly art, entered into 
a contract which ordained that once a day he 
should polish the brass window rods of his 
tutor’s saloon. 

But in this world every rose has its thorn, 
and every Klondike its Chilkoot. The 
Shanghai Sharkey, for all his conquests, with 
all his admirers, and all his fame, was far 
from being inwardly happy. He was an im- 
postor. In the bottom of his own heart he 
knew he was a sham and a deception. He 
was not the thing he pretended to be, and the 
irony of it all weighed heavily on his heart. 

The skeleton in the Shanghai Sharkey’s 
closet was nothing more nor less than a Baby. 
Over this Baby his spirit brooded with a ten- 
derness that was almost maternal. As a 
fighting man he knew well enough -he should 
be above all such things ! But try as he 
might, he could not help entertaining a secret 
and passionate love for this same little shred 
of humanity, which came unexpectedly into 
his home one memorable day. As a Sharkey it 
69 


The Loom of Destiny 

was both wrong and inconsistent, and a weak- 
ness to be overcome, in some way, and hero- 
ically lived down. Babies were for women 
folks to bother about, and were meant mostly 
for boys to kick. But the loaded die had 
ordained that Timmie, the man of blood, 
should, in truth, have the heart of a girl, and 
that having such, he should lead for all time 
a double life. 

The same hand that had knocked out 
Dinney Crockett one day might be discov- 
ered the next holding, with great care and 
tenderness, a little oval-shaped bottle from 
which a hungry infant could be seen feeding. 
Or at night the Shanghai Sharkey might be 
found patiently rocking an uncouth looking 
little cradle, and humming a slumber croon 
of his own invention to the Baby. The 
cradle in question, Timmie himself had made 
of a sugar barrel and a stolen fence-board. 
But the worst of it all was, that to do such, 
was the joy of Timmie’s life. 

Day after day the Baby’s mother lay on 
her bed, counting the figures on the dirty 
wall-paper, and nervously clutching at the 
70 


Life’s Loaded Die 

threads in the worn counterpane. Timmie 
did not mind not being able to go out, and it 
did not take him long to learn how to warm 
the milk. But now and then some stray 
street-cry would enter the quiet little room, 
and he would remember his old battles, and 
the thought of them would fill him with a 
sickening horror. 

Still, in some way, his barbaric little heart 
warmed to his work, and he did his best to 
forget, and in time he grew to love the little 
squalling piece of ever-hungry flesh and blood 
with a love that was wonderful and beautiful 
to behold. 

It was only natural, then, that following 
the birth of the Baby there was less blood- 
shed in the Ward than the oldest inhabitant 
or even the most vigilant policeman could 
remember. 

But one week after Timmie had completed 
his wonderful cradle, his father came home, 
exhaling the odour of gin, and kicked the 
cradle out into the street. When Timmie’s 
mother, who lay sobbing on her bed, wailed 
that she had no more money to give him, he 

71 


The Loom of Destiny 

prepared to kick the woman into the street 
after the cradle. 

“ Money, damn you ; I must ’ave money ! ” 
roared the man, mad drunk. He had been 
born within sound of Bow Bells, and under 
drink or sudden passion his Cockney accent 
and his hunger to kick women came back to 
him. 

“ ’Old off, you bloody young whelp ! ” he 
cried the next minute, for Timmie had seen 
the act and had flung himself on his father, 
tooth and nail. “ ’Old off, I say, or I ’ll 
kick your bloody young guts out ! ” 

The man shook the boy off as a bull-dog 
would shake a pup, roughly, but not unkindly. 

“ Money ! you bawlin’ ’ound, money, I 
say, or I ’ll — ” 

Timmie knew his mother was going to be 
murdered. This time he fought with neither 
his fists nor his feet. With vice-like arms 
he clutched his father about the knees, and 
sank his teeth into the fleshy part of the huge 
leg he held, till the blood spurted out on the 
blue-jean overalls, and the taste of it on his 
lips turned him sick. 

72 


Life’s Loaded Die 

The man leaped away with a howl of 
anguish, recovered himself, and aimed one 
deadly kick at the boy. The Shanghai 
Sharkey dodged the great heavy boot like a 
cat, burst open the door, and screamed again 
and again for help. 

In two minutes a hundred strange feet 
were tramping about the little house, though 
it was an hour and more before the hospital 
ambulance drove up and carried the woman 
away. 

In a moment of consciousness, as they 
were carrying her out, her feeble eyes caught 
sight of the police patrol. Then it was she 
swore to them, over and over again, that it 
was not her husband who had done it. 

Thereafter followed dark and troublous 
days for the Shanghai Sharkey. Man, at his 
birth, is the most helpless of all animals, and 
this fact Timmie learned, in the bitterness of 
his heart, when he found himself the sole 
guardian and protector of a motherless 
baby. 

Seldom was he seen upon the streets, and 
when it did so happen it was always noted 
73 


The Loom of Destiny 

that he skulked hurriedly homewards with 
some strange parcel under his arm. Mys- 
terious washings, too, appeared by night on 
the Sharkey clothes-line, and endless were 
the speculations as to just what hand wielded 
the soap-bar in that depleted household. 

As for the Shanghai Sharkey himself, he 
often all but shuddered as he wondered what 
the “ gang ” would think if they ever knew 
he had turned into a house nurse. For with 
his own hands he fed and washed and dressed 
the Baby, and with his own hands he created 
for it a beautiful perambulator, to take the 
place of the lost cradle. This perambulator 
he made of two very wobbly tricycle wheels, 
purchased from Snapsie Doogan with a 
broken jack-knife and a paper windmill, 
while a box that bore the imprint of “Fox- 
bury Rye,” the latter being the special gift 
of Mike Donovan, did duty as body for the 
carriage. 

It was three weeks after his mother had 
been taken to the hospital, one sunny day, 
when Timmie was sneaking shamefacedly 
homeward with a bottle of fresh milk for the 


74 


Life’s Loaded Die 

Baby hidden under his coat, that he came 
face to face with Maggie Reilly. That 
young lady, who for months past had made 
seductive but ineffectual eyes at the Shanghai 
Sharkey, was almost bursting with importance, 
for she had just come from the hospital and 
was the bearer of great news. 

“ She ain’t a-goin’ to die ! ” said Maggie, 
gazing at the boy with a yearning that would 
have melted a heart less adamantine. That 
was all she said, but Timmie understood. 
Maggie half regretted this less tragic turn of 
events, for she had hoped a death in the family 
might humble the pride of the Shanghai Shar- 
key and turn his mind to tender thoughts. 

Two days later Mrs. Reilly herself called 
on the abashed Timmie, who was almost 
caught in the very act of feeding the Baby 
from a bottle. 

“ Egschuse me. Mister Sharkey,” she said 
in a tone that cut the boy to the bone, so 
withering was its sarcasm, carefully holding 
up her ancient skirts while she spoke, “ but 
Oi’ve jist seen yure muther, and she’s sint 
down worrud be me fur yez to bring up the 
75 


The Loom of Destiny 

Baby in the marnin’, shure ! Ah, poor sowl ! 
Indade but she hungers for the soight of 
him ! ” Mrs. Reilly watched every word 
strike home. “ Will yez do it ?,” she asked. 

“ ’Course,” said Timmie, doggedly. 

Mrs. Reilly did not add that the kindly 
suggestion had been her own. She saw, 
with much gratification, the pallor that over- 
spread Timmie’s face, and she inwardly re- 
joiced at that pallor, for in days gone by 
the Shanghai Sharkey had closed both the 
eyes of her little Patrick, and sent him home 
with bleeding mouth and broken spirit, to 
the undying humiliation of the house of 
Reilly. 

So Mrs. Reilly pointed out, with quite un- 
necessary care and precision, just how such a 
journey would be watched with delight by 
every man, woman, and child in the Ward, 
and gracefully withdrew, after pointedly ex- 
pressing the hope that he would n’t put down 
a poor, dear baby to fight with any undecent 
blackguard as would stop to laugh at a boy 
who was only doing his bounden duty. 

Then, as she swept out, she noticed the 

76 


Life’s Loaded Die 

sudden look of fierce rebellion that mounted 
the boy’s face, and discreetly stopped in the 
doorway a minute or two to enlarge on the 
blessedness of filial duty, and hoped “ as he 
was n’t a boy as would n’t listen to his 
muther’s dyin’ wish — or, leastways, almost 
dyin’ wish ! ” 

The Shanghai Sharkey, after that scene, 
spent a sleepless night. In the throes of 
that midnight struggle he learned for the first 
time that the biggest battles of this life are 
not fought with fists. That knowledge is 
never good for a pugilist. 

In the morning, when he was feeding the 
Baby, he sighed heavily once or twice. It 
was a hard world. But in his eyes there was 
a new light. 

With that new light in his eyes and with 
set jaws, he slowly and deliberately arranged 
two pillows in the little baby-carriage he had 
so lovingly made, and over them spread a 
blanket. With a tenderness quite new to 
him, and a deftness strange to his gnarled 
and stubby little fingers, he lifted the Baby 
into the outlandish cart, and carefully fixed a 
77 


The Loom of Destiny 

blanket over him. At first he was tempted to 
cover him, head and all, in case he might 
cry. But that, he saw, was a compromise, 
and he decided otherwise. 

Then he opened the door and took one 
last look at the dingy room, and the walls 
that had hidden so long his life’s disgrace. 
Once more he sighed ! 

In another moment the Rubicon was 
crossed, and the uncouth little baby-carriage 
was on the sidewalk. 

Outside, buildings and street seemed to 
reel and stagger drunkenly together. For, as 
he had expected, Mrs. Reilly had not been 
idle. Somewhere or other he had once heard 
that he who lives by the sword must die by 
the sword. As a fighting man he asked no 
favours. She was his enemy, and if she had 
got within his guard, why, it was only a 
part of the game, after all ! But it was a 
hard game. 

A thousand curious eyes, it seemed, were 
staring impertinently at him. Every door 
along the street was open and filled with 
waiting faces. On each face was a sinister, 
78 


Life’s Loaded Die 

pitiless, exultant grin. Godiva riding naked 
through the streets of Canterbury was happier 
than Timmie Sharkey that day. 

Eyes that had once looked up at him with 
only awe and undisguised veneration, now 
gaped at him with mocking laughter and 
noses he had once triumphantly punched were 
now turned up at him. Derisive, goat-like 
cries came from every fence-corner. Even 
a tin can or two was flung at him, and at 
each fresh assault screams of delight echoed 
down the street. 

A mimic wailing, as of a thousand suffer- 
ing babes, came from upper windows and 
doorsteps. But not once did the Shanghai 
Sharkey stop. A woman flung a dipper of 
dirty water at him from a fire escape, and 
someone threw a watermelon rind, which 
struck one wheel of the carriage. 

Growing bolder with each unnoticed sally, 
the band of merciless tormentors at last joined 
in line behind the baby-carriage, and sent 
volley after volley of coarse raillery at the 
boy. 

Then Pat Reilly openly and ostentatiously 

79 


The Loom of Destiny 

flung an old boot at him. The missile smote 
him heavily in the back and the crowd held 
its breath. But from the Shanghai Sharkey 
came neither response nor retaliation. 

With that unanswered challenge, both he 
himself and the entire East Side realised one 
thing — 

The Shanghai Sharkey had fallen — fallen 
for all time. 


8o 


THE CRUCIBLE OF CHARACTER 


They * or led us up from our sewer ome^ 
An' wept at our dirty wyes. 

“ They 're 'umaut as us, O Gawd, be' old. 
An' open their darkened eyes I" 




O F all his friends Russell Wentworth 
Russell liked Snapsie Doogan the 

best. 

The reasons for this were many. Snapsie 
belonged to a world far distant from his own, 
and told him of weird and wonderful things 
that took place in Foreign Parts, vaguely but 
alluringly known as the Ward. 

Then, again, there was no one to order 
Snapsie’s going out or his coming in, and 
this alone almost deified Snapsie in his eyes. 
To Russell Wentworth Russell, who had a 
governess and a French maid, to say nothing 
of a mamma who was always telling him not 
to do things, such undreamed of liberty as 
Snapsie’s seemed incredible and god-like. 

As for Snapsie, he had neither maid, gover- 
ness, nor mother, but gloated unnecessarily 

83 


The Loom of Destiny 

over his good luck. On several occasions, 
however, he had plainly and openly hinted 
that he should very much like Russell to 
take him and show him these three myste- 
rious personages of his household, especially 
the French maid at meal-time, for he had 
somewhere heard that French people always 
ate live and wriggling frogs. 

But this privilege was obviously impossible, 
as Russell's mamma had forbidden him to 
play with street boys, and once even had 
ordered the butler to chase Snapsie off the 
front steps. 

Snapsie, thus outraged, wreaked a satis- 
factory but at the same time underhand 
revenge, by making a slide on the snowy 
asphalt, directly in front of Russell's house. 
Up and down this beautiful slide he careened 
for two boisterous hours, with much studied 
gusto and many a sign of delirious joy, know- 
ing full well that Russell was watching him 
from the nursery window with tearful and 
covetous eyes. 

But what seemed the most enviable and 
beautiful thing about Snapsie and his life was 

84 


The Crucible of Character 

the fact that he could eat whatever and 
whenever he liked. No matter what time of 
day it was, all he had to do was to sit down 
and eat ! With Russell it was very different, 
for it was part of Russell’s mamma’s daily 
occupation to examine him for symptoms of 
inherited gastritis. 

Ever since Russell had had bilious fever 
— and the much-abused Russell knew in his 
heart of hearts that it had been brought on 
merely by an inordinate stuffing of cold suet 
pudding, given to him secretly by Nora, the 
chambermaid, in the cook’s absence — candy 
and taffy, tarts and doughnuts, and all such 
things, indeed, that go to make life bear- 
able for the Youthful, had been denied him. 
Even peanuts were tabooed, and after each 
meal he was made to swallow a pepsin 
tablet. 

And many a time, accordingly, did his 
mouth water during his clandestine meetings 
with Snapsie, and he would eagerly watch the 
boy from the Ward struggling with a deli- 
ciously sticky all-day-sucker or a pink-tinted 
bull ’s-eye. Snapsie, by the way, made it a 

85 


The Loom of Destiny 

point always to save his little delicacies until 
such meetings, since he had discovered that 
the hungry eyes of another boy could give 
to his sugary prize an extraneous and quite 
intangible sweetness. 

It was one afternoon when Russell had 
stolen out through the coach-house to a 
vacant lot they had appointed as a rendez- 
vous, and was helping Snapsie make a bonfire 
of a piece of cheese-box and an apple barrel, 
that he, watching the Ward boy rapturously 
making away with his third cocoanut caramel, 
asked him if he ever got the stomach-ache ? 

‘‘ Naw ! said Snapsie, wiping his mouth 
with his coat sleeve, ‘‘ on’y onct — las* 
Chris*mus ! ** 

“ At Christmas ! ** said Russell. “ It must 
have been fun.** 

“ Well, I guess ! There was a blokie 
wid a jag on took me into a swell hash-house 
and says, ‘ Now, little lean guts, order any- 
t*ing yer wants.* Didn*t I order up de 
grub, though ! ** 

Snapsie *s eyes saddened with the memory 
of it all. 


86 


The Crucible of Character 

“ What — what did you take ? ** asked 
Russell, hungrily. 

<c W’y,” I says to de chief grub-slinger, 
“look ’ere, waiter, gimme one cow-juice 
wid an overcoat, an’ den youse can trow on 
a pair of de white wings wid de sunny side 
up, an’ den a slice or two for a gazabo, 
an’ some mixed Irish arter dat, an’ den a 
Santiago cake-walk, w’ich, of course, is a 
Spanish Ommerlet. Did I eat? Oh, no, 
I did n’t do a t’ing to dat meal, I did n’t ! 
Den I finished ’er up wid some Chinese 
white weddin’ an’ a French roll wid black 
dirt on it ! ” 

“ Black dirt, Snapsie ? ” said Russell, 
dubiously. 

“Yep, o’ course it was black dirt! Dat 
means choc’lut.” 

“ Oh, chocolate,” said Russell, brighten- 
ing, for he had understood none of Snapsie’s 
graphically enumerated dishes, though he had 
vaguely felt their deliciousness, by the way 
in which the other boy worked his mouth 
and rolled his eyes. “ Why, we often have 
chocolate at home.” 


s; 


The Loom of Destiny 

“Youse? Well, w’y don’t youse bring 
us some out, now and den ? ” 

“ Why, I — I never thought of that ! 
Besides, my mamma does n’t let me eat 
things, you know. ” 

“ Oh, dat ’s nuthin’ ; w’y don’t youse pinch 
some ? ” Snapsie queried, in the most matter- 
of-fact manner. 

Why did n’t he pinch some ? Why did n’t 
he, indeed ? It seemed strange that he had 
never thought of that before. Other boys 
ate chocolate. Even Snapsie had it as often 
as he liked. Why should n’t he pinch some ? 
Snapsie, upon inquiry, stated that it was great 
fun to pinch stuff. 

Russell Wentworth Russell found that the 
thought of his unjust treatment was a wonder- 
ful salve to his rebellious conscience. To 
his unelastic little code of fitting things, the 
idea of stealing was nauseatingly new. But 
he was never let have anything he wanted. 
Why should n’t he eat stuff between meals, 
the same as other boys ? Why was he made 
such a baby of, and treated like a girl ? He 
succeeded in making himself quite miserable, 
88 


The Crucible of Character 

and had worked himself up into a satisfying 
passion of revolt by the time he stole home 
by way of the coach-house. 

He went in through the back door. He 
dared to do this in the face of tradition in 
order that he might pass through the kitchen, 
off which opened the pantry. It was in the 
pantry, he knew, that the chocolate was kept. 

To the boy this same pantry had always 
seemed a place of mysterious twilight, en- 
chanted and fragrant as it was with the odour 
of strange spices and the haunting perfumes of 
many kinds of fruit. In it, he knew, were kept 
raisins and currants, and bottles of vanilla, 
and orange peel, and wine biscuits, and 
angel food, and sponge cake, and everything, 
in fact, that would go to make it a place of 
paradisal mystery to the heart of the average 
small boy. At the end of the pantry, too, 
was a high, small window with a wide ledge, 
on which custards were always put to cool 
and jellies were left to form in the moulds. 
There was also a row of spice-boxes, all 
duly labelled and ranged beside canisters of 
tea and sugar and coffee. What was on the 
89 


The Loom of Destiny 

higher shelves w^as a secret that only the 
cook and the gods themselves could tell. 

From his earliest day, before the regime 
of the reigning cook, Russell Wentvi^orth 
Russell could remember the one particular 
red canister in which the chocolate was 
always kept. Often he had seen the old 
cook take out the beautiful, dark-brown 
squares done up in glittering tin-foil that all 
his life had seemed so delicious to him, 
especially on cake. 

The old cook, Russell remembered, had 
been much nicer than Nora, the new one. 
Before the advent of Nora he had been 
allowed to stand in the kitchen and gaze 
wonderingly at the lurid heat of the range, 
and watch the sizzling roasts being lifted 
smoking hot from the pan to the big platter, 
which had queer little runnels in it for the 
gravy. And he once used to watch, with 
delight, the sponge cake being pierced with a 
thin whisp from the broom, to see if it was 
done in the centre, and get the burnt part 
when it was cut olF. The splutter and 
bubble of the hot grease when water was 
90 


The Crucible of Character 

poured on it from the kettle, to make gravy, 
had always been a sound he took special 
pleasure in, and sometimes he even had the 
good luck to see the live crabs meet their 
sickening yet fascinating death by scalding. 
Sometimes, too, he used to get the dish with 
the sugar frosting to scrape out. Sugar frost- 
ing, he remembered, was delicious ! 

But Nora, the new cook, was so differ- 
ent ! She was very cross, and said the 
kitchen was no place fur child er.” Her 
Irish arms were red and big and strong, and 
her shoulders were broad, and she had a way 
of slamming to the oven door that always 
made Russell very much afraid of her. 
Her mere firm stride and the quick, war-like 
way in which she would approach and retreat 
from the hot range with one red arm guard- 
ing her face, soon made Russell afraid of her, 
even before she had felt enough at home in 
her new place to tell him in so many words 
that he had no business to an occasional 
handful of raisins out of her colander. 

His mother herself now entered that 
throne-room of domesticity with a certain 

91 


The Loom of Destiny 

timidity, so strong-willed and outspoken was 
its monarch on the question of foreign 
intrusion. 

So when Russell heard the step of the 
cook coming up from the laundry, he flushed 
guiltily and fled upstairs, by way of the back 
hall, tingling with fear. At the top of the 
stairs he listened for several moments, then 
tiptoed up to the nursery, where for an hour 
he brooded alone with some indefinite sense 
of shame. The baby curl went out of his 
lips and his eyes hardened, for it was his first 
passion of illicit possession. He tried to 
remember just how chocolate tasted, and 
brought to mind the last time he had eaten 
it as frosting on cake. It was about the 
sweetest thing, he thought, that he had ever 
tasted. But then they put such a little bit of 
frosting on cakes, and never, never was he 
allowed a second piece. The injustice of it 
all filled him with a weak, indeterminate rage. 

When Weston, the maid, came to take 
him out for his walk he hotly protested that 
he had a headache, and would not go. He 
wanted to be alone. This unexpected revolt 
92 


The Crucible of Character 

brought his flurried mamma on the scene, 
who set down his flushed face and his restless 
movements as incipient scarlatina, and made 
him hold a clinic thermometer in his mouth 
to see if he had a temperature. How he 
loathed and abhorred that thermometer ! 
Then his mother took him on her knee and 
was about to give him one of his much- 
beloved “ petting-ups,” when he broke stub- 
bornly away and fled to the furnace-room. 

The result of such extraordinary conduct 
was that he was straightway put to bed, and 
kept there through one long, tearful day. 
It was only after a passionate outburst and 
a refusal to eat his breakfast that he was 
allowed to get up on the second morning. 

All that day, making a plea of his so-called 
illness, he hung about the back of the house, 
listening always for the footsteps of the 
cook. They seemed never to leave the 
kitchen. Then he fell to wondering how 
much chocolate there might possibly be in 
the red canister. 

He could not decide whether to eat it all 
himself, or share it with Snapsie. He 
93 


The Loom of Destiny- 

thought he ought to share it with Snapsie. 
The consciousness of having a comrade in 
the deed was strangely consoling. 

But never had the house seemed so full of 
sounds. At each little noise he started, and 
his breath came quicker. 

Then he heard the voices of Weston and 
the cook talking together, and later he heard 
the sound of their feet on the laundry stairs. 

He crept half-way down his own stairs, 
step by step, and then stopped to listen once 
more. A sudden, terrible silence seemed to 
hang over the back of the house. 

Then, on his toes, he slunk cautiously 
down to the kitchen. It was quite empty. 
Then he stole across the bare floor and 
quietly turned the handle of the pantry door. 
It creaked startlingly. He waited a minute 
to listen. Hearing no sound, he swung the 
door open and stepped into the chamber of 
mysteries. There, before him, stood the 
red canister, emblazoned with letters of 
shining gold. He felt the lid, fearfully. A 
sudden trembling seized his knees, and his 
small, talon-like fingers shook visibly as he 
94 


The Crucible of Character 

reached down to the bottom of the cannister 
and clutched one of the large squares of 
silver-papered chocolate. There were other 
pieces in the cannister, but he did not stop to 
take them all, as had been his first intention. 
The sound of feet on the laundry stairs 
reached his ears and he turned and fled. 

At the top of the stairs he slackened his 
pace, and leaned panting over the banister. 
No one was following him. Then with 
slow and cautious steps and eyes watchful, 
like an animal’s, he crept on, from door to 
door, to the nursery. 

There he sat down, wiping the cold per- 
spiration from his face with his coat sleeve. 
Then he got up and walked to the window. 
The room seemed suffocatingly hot to him. 
He noticed he had left the door open. After 
peering a silent moment or two down the 
hall he quickly closed the door, and would 
have locked it, but there was no key. 

With trembling fingers he drew the cake 
of chocolate from under his blouse. He had 
broken it, in his flight, and to his horror, 
three or four loose bits fell on the floor. 


95 


The Loom of Destiny 

These he quickly gathered up, carefully 
brushing away the tell-tale marks with his 
sleeve. 

He looked at his prize several moments 
without moving. It seemed, of a sudden, to 
have lost its value, and he doubted if, after 
all, chocolate was so nice as he had thought. 
One of the pieces he nibbled at timidly. 
The taste was crushingly disappointing, for 
it was unsweetened. It had all been a mis- 
take. Almost nauseated, he spat the sickly 
taste of the stuff from his mouth. 

Then slowly, terribly, it crept over him 
that he could never eat this thing he had 
stolen. Neither could he give it back. Nor 
could he carry it about with him. Someone 
might come in at any time, — at that very 
moment, and catch him with it. He wished 
he had never done it ! 

He guiltily stole downstairs, and across 
the little back yard out to the stables. 
Watching his chance, he climbed into the 
hay-loft unobserved, and buried the odious 
pieces of stolen things deep, deep down in 
the hay in one corner of the loft. 

96 


The Crucible of Character 

He was gazing drearily, but with tacit 
watchfulness, from the nursery window when 
he heard the voice of the cook, talking to 
his mother. His heart stopped beating. 
The cook was saying that someone had 
stolen the chocolate, this time a whole cake ! 
The boy sidled close to the nursery door that 
he might hear the better. The cook said she 
believed it was that drunken James. Then 
his mother said such a thing was ridiculous, 
and that it was n’t really worth worrying 
over, and that she had better use cocoanut 
this time. 

There were great and unknown guests 
that night for dinner, and that meant that 
Russell Wentworth Russell had his meal 
alone in the nursery. For the first time in 
his life he was glad of it. But so silent and 
dejected and miserable was he throughout his 
meal that the mystified Weston went down- 
stairs, and came mysteriously back with a deli- 
cacy she knew would be a delightful surprise. 

Holding her hands laughingly behind her, 
she came close to him and thrust it suddenly 
upon his plate. 

7 


97 


The Loom of Destiny 

It was a huge piece of chocolate cake. 

The boy shrank back as though Weston 
had struck him with her hand. He flushed 
hot and cold, and cowered, vaguely feeling 
that Weston knew everything and was play- 
ing a cruel joke on him. 

But there was nothing but kindly surprise 
in Weston’s eyes. 

“ Why, Russell, dear, it ’s chocolate ! ” 

Russell neither spoke nor raised his eyes. 
There was a choking lump in his throat, and 
to hide a sudden gush of tears he slipped 
away from the table and went sullenly up to 
his bedroom. 

That night there was no sleep for Russell 
Wentworth Russell. For three long hours 
he turned and twisted in his brass cot, with 
the awful secret eating his heart out. He 
was a thief, a thief, a thief! The darkness 
seemed to scream it at him, and the laugh- 
ing night seemed to know. In a rage of 
grief he smote his pillow with his arms and 
groaned under his breath, until he could stand 
it no longer. Somebody, somebody must be 
told. 


98 


The Crucible of Character 

He sat up in bed. He would go straight 
to his mother and tell her everything. 

No, that would not do. He was not really 
afraid of his mother, — it was the unknown 
and awful cook. But, then, that would 
make it even. He would go right to the 
cook and tell her. He wondered what she 
would do. The thought of facing her filled 
him with a sick fear, and he lay back weakly 
on his bed. No, he dare not tell her. 

But the Thief! Thief! Thief! started to 
ring again in his ears, and his soul writhed at 
the sound. He must do it. He closed his 
eyes and counted ten. Then, with one tear- 
ful gulp, he slipped out of bed. He went to 
the door and listened. It was terribly still 
and dark. Holding up his nightgown, he 
stole down the long hall, desperately facing 
the darkness. Shadows and little night 
sounds, that at other times would have shaken 
his childish frame with thrills of terror, he 
slipped past without even seeing or hearing. 

At last he came to the cook’s door. Once, 
twice, three times he knocked timidly on 
it. There was no answer. Then he pushed 
99 


The Loom of Destiny 

it open and walked courageously in. The 
cook was sleeping soundly. He shook her 
arm. She did not move. He shook it again, 
this time desperately. With a startled cry 
the cook opened her eyes, and sat up in bed. 

‘‘ Why, Masther Russell, what is it ? ” she 
cried, peering through the dim light that 
came in at the window. She could see that 
the boy’s face was as white as his nightgown. 
As he did not answer she asked him again. 
There was a note of kindliness in her voice 
at the second query, for she also saw that he 
was shivering, and his face was drawn and 
tear-stained. 

Twice he tried to speak and could not. 
The choking lump in his throat seemed to 
keep back the words. When the sound did 
break out, it came in a sort of sobbing 
scream. And the sound of that voice was 
not like the sound of the voice of Russell 
Wentworth Russell, though it came from 
his own throat. 

“ Cook^ I — I — stole the chocolate! ” 


100 


THE ESSENTIALS OF 
ARISTOCRACY 


But agine they weeps an' agine they syes 
As it b' aint our bloomin' fault ; 

An' they syes to us as they ' an ds us out : 
“ How earn your bloody salt!" 


4 



H e knew they were to be enemies. 

Just why he could never have said, 
but he felt it in his bones when their eyes 
first met. Each of the two boys seemed to 
recognise the silent and mysterious challenge 
of combative childhood. 

The new boy’s face was shiny from soap 
and hot water, and under his arm he carried 
his new slate and a crisp yellow-covered 
First Book. The doctor had told his Aunt 
Martha that the children ought to be kept 
out of the way for the next few weeks. His 
Aunt Martha had cruelly suggested school 
for him. 

It was with a sinking heart that he felt 
himself led relentlessly up the urchin-lined 
walk of the new Ward school. 

“ Hello, kid, whatcher name ? ” asked a 

103 


The Loom of Destiny 

lean-legged boy with a cigarette stub in his 
mouth. 

“ Johnnie Armstrong, please,” replied the 
new boy, almost tearfully. 

But that one pair of challenging eyes — 
they followed him right up the walk and 
into the schoolhouse. There were scores 
of other audacious enemies who gazed criti- 
cally at the patches on his knees and the 
hole in the toe of his boot, but in all that 
army of foes he knew to the marrow in his 
childish bones that this one particular boy 
was to be his one particular enemy. 

Through all the long, stifling, terrible first 
hour of school life he furtively watched the 
figure of his fated opponent. 

During recess the new boy hung about the 
hallway, homesick and miserable. He won- 
dered what his Aunt Martha and the baby 
were doing. He knew what his mother was 
doing — she was in bed all the time, of 
course, and coughing away just the same as 
if he were there. 

At the end of recess, when the bell rang, 
and the screaming, surging crowd of children 
104 


The Essentials of Aristocracy 

made the usual mad rush for their rooms, the 
new boy and the enemy came face to face in 
the hall. The new boy was bunted vigor- 
ously against the wall as his rival went past. 
The new boy expected it. A scream of de- 
light broke from the groups of hurrying boys 
and girls as they crowded past, or stopped a 
moment to watch him get up and brush the 
dust from his carefully patched clothes. 

For one weak moment, at noon, the new 
boy was tempted to slip out by the girl’s 
door, and so escape. That would mean put- 
ting olF the fight for a day at least. 

One of the girls, as she hurried out, saw 
he was a new boy and made a face at him. 
The malevolence of that grimace turned him 
precipitately back. With quaking knees, 
and a pitiful mockery of a whistle, he walked 
out of the boys’ door. The fight had to be 
that day ! 

It was all as he expected. He^ of course, 
was waiting for him. With a choking sick- 
liness at his throat he made steadily for the 
gate. Before he was half way there a jagged 
piece of cinder struck him on the cheek with 

105 


The Loom of Destiny 

a stinging pain. He put up his hand and felt 
his face. It was bleeding. A surge of 
something like drunkenness swept through 
his frame. He did n’t mind the bleeding. 
Now he did n’t care. He was glad it really 
was bleeding. That meant that they had 
to fight it out then and there. He did n’t 
mind fighting, nor did he mind getting 
whipped. But he felt that he would rather 
be pounded to pieces than endure any longer 
this uncertainty of position. One or the 
other must be boss, and boss for all time. 

It hardly seemed his own hand that 
clutched wildly for a fragment of brick on 
the ground and flung it with all his force at 
the other boy. It went wide, for it was 
thrown in blind passion. 

But it brought the enemy, bristling and 
aggressive, toward him. 

Did youse t’row that at me, kid ” de- 
manded the boy who had thrown the coal 
cinder. He could not have been a year 
older than the other. 

“ ’Course I did ! ” said the new boy, al- 
most crying, but not daring to show it. 
io6 


The Essentials of Aristocracy 

His voice sounded strange to him. He w 2 ls 
a coward to the backbone ; and no one knew 
that better than he himself. But his face 
was bleeding, and he did n’t care now ! And 
he was afraid the boys would find out that 
he really was a coward. 

They fought. A dozen small boys saw 
the well-known preliminaries, and ran joy- 
fully toward the two, screaming as they 
came, “ A fight ! a fight ! ” A man in an 
express waggon pulled up to look down on 
the struggle, and two or three girls watched 
open-mouthed from the sidewalk. 

When the teacher came out of the school 
gate, five minutes later, she saw a group of 
small boys scurry suspiciously away. One 
boy limped — for kicking had been allowed 
— and the other left little drops of blood 
here and there on the sidewalk as he ran. 
It had not been to a finish, but the skinny, 
narrow-chested new boy had surprised them 
all. As for the new boy himself, he was su- 
premely thankful that he was even alive. 

His misery came back to him with a dead- 
ening rush when he remembered that he 
107 


The Loom of Destiny 

must show himself at home. He crawled, 
snail-like, in at the back door and listened. 
The doctor was there, and he was glad of it. 
He was also glad when his Aunt Martha 
told him that he must not go in and see his 
mother. He could hear her coughing feebly, 
and the baby crying for something to eat. 
As his aunt went into his mother’s room with 
a hot-water bottle, she called back for him 
to take some fried potatoes and hash off the 
stove and eat his dinner. He did as he was 
told, and hurried away before his aunt came 
out again. His face was still blood-stained 
and scratched. 

Sick at heart, he slouched back to school. 
In the yard one of the boys said: “You 
licked ’m, Johnnie.” 

“ Naw, he did n’t, neither,” said another. 
“ Jim had ’im bleedin’.” 

“ Aw gwan ! that was n’t in the fight ! 
That ’uz when he chucked the cinder at ’im. 
You had ’im dead skart in the fight, did n’t 
you, Johnnie ? ” 

“ ’Course I did,” said Johnnie Armstrong, 
stoutly, though he knew he was lying. 
io8 


The Essentials of Aristocracy 

‘‘ ’Course,” said another boy. There ’s 
Jim, now, skart to come over ! ” 

Deliciously it dawned on him. It was 
a revelation to the new boy. Jim was skulk- 
ing up the side of the school yard, with all 
the old, insolent air of aggression gone from 
his limping gait. Then he had licked him 
after all ! The little narrow chest of the 
new boy swelled with pride. 

But this was by no means the end of the 
battle. From that day the struggle for su- 
premacy merely took on another form. The 
defeated boy realised that a physical en- 
counter was entirely out of the question. So 
the warfare for relative rank, since there was 
no other way to fight it out, became a battle 
of tongues. 

Jimmie Carson told the girls of the school 
that Johnnie Armstrong wore his Aunt 
Martha’s stockings. Johnnie writhed in 
spirit, for he knew this was sadly true. But 
he gave his enemy the lie, and openly de- 
clared that Jimmie Carson’s father had been 
put in jail for stealing a horse. This, too, 
was equally true. But Jimmie retorted by 
109 


The Loom of Destiny- 

saying he would n’t wear patches on his pants. 
Johnnie once more regained his superiority 
by pointing out that he did n’t have to wear 
his sister’s old shoes. 

So day by day the struggle went on. 
Johnnie Armstrong seemed to be getting the 
worst of it, until he remembered something 
that was as a Blucher for his Waterloo. 

With a great air he said to his enemy : 
“ The doctor comes to our house every day.” 
The circle of listening urchins heard the 
remark with a certain awe. With them that 
meant either a baby or a funeral. 

“ Oh, that ’s nothin’,” said the enemy. 
“ My ma had three doctors when Tommie 
swallowed the penny.” A chorus of wonder 
went up from the listening circle. 

Johnnie snorted. “ H’gh ! A penny ’s 
nothin’ ! My mother ’s got consumption ! ” 
“ I don’t care if she has. Mine gets chills 
and fever jus’ terrible ! ” 

Johnnie felt that dangerous surge sweep 
over him. 

“Yes, but my mother coughs all day long, 
and has night sweats, and her medicine costs 


no 


The Essentials of Aristocracy 

about — about — well, about three dollars a 
bottle.” 

“ H’gh ! What *s that ! When my ma 
gets one of her spells it ’s just awful. She 
shakes so hard someone has to hold her in 
bed ! ” 

Again Johnnie snorted his contempt. 

“ The doctor told my Aunt Martha my 
mother was going to cough herself to pieces, 
and that she might die any single day.” 

That rather staggered Jimmie Carson. A 
voice back in the crowd said, “ Hurrah for 
Johnnie ! ” and the new boy’s chest swelled 
with the old pride. 

“ And she can’t ever get better,” went on 
the exultant Johnnie. “ And I ’ll ride in a 
cab, see, same as I did at grandpa’s funeral ! ” 

The enemy recovered himself. “ Oh, 
ridin’ in a cab ain’t nothin’. I watched my 
grandpa die ! And Uncle Jake was killed, 
too. He was a fireman, and they brought 
him home on a board, after a wall fell right 
over on top of him, and he was all bleedin’ 
terrible, and smashed up ! ” 

A well-merited cheer from the circle 


III 


The Loom of Destiny 

greeted this sally. The school bell rang be- 
fore Johnnie Armstrong had a chance to 
meet the crushing charge. The children 
scampered away and Johnnie’s head fell. 
All afternoon the sense of his defeat hung 
over him and made him miserable. 

Late in the day there came a knock at the 
door and the teacher was called out. 

As the teacher stepped in again Johnnie 
noticed his Aunt Martha in the hall. She 
was holding a handkerchief up to her eyes. 

The teacher called Johnnie up to her desk. 
There she started to tell him something, 
stopped, slipped her arms around him, and 
burst out crying, to the wonder of the entire, 
open-eyed school. Johnnie turned crimson 
with shame. To be seen with a woman 
petting one was a terrible and awful thing to 
him. Jimmie Carson giggled audibly. 

The teacher wiped away her tears, kissed 
the child sorrowfully, and falteringly whis- 
pered something in his ear. 

She expected an outburst, but there was 
none, not even a sob. 

As the child walked down to his desk for 


II2 


The Essentials of Aristocracy 

his little book and slate, there was a strange, 
exultant gleam on his face. All the eyes of 
the school were upon him, but he saw only 
those of the enemy. 

The sense of his defeat still hung over him. 
As he passed the other boy he looked down 
at him, as from a height. 

‘‘ Say, Johnnie, what’s wrong ? ” whispered 
his foe, curiosity overruling pride. 

There was a ring of mingled sorrow and 
triumph in the voice of Johnnie as he said : 

“ My mother ’s dead, see ! ” 

“ Gosh ! ” said Jimmie, overcome. John- 
nie knew he had won at last. Every eye 
in the school-room was on him as he went 
out. 

In the hall his Aunt Martha was waiting 
to take him home, with her handkerchief still 
over her eyes. 


113 


8 









THE HONOUR OF THE HOUSE 
OF HUMMERLEY 


AtC some as this, ati* some as that. 

We drifts to th' ends of th' Earth ; 

An' if One turns 'Ome, it's Ten forgets : 
W'ich shows their gawdless birth / 



> 


1 



H IS real name was Hugh Edward 
Hummerley, but they called him 
Tiddlywinks for short. 

As the son of an English major who once 
had fought real battles in India, and who 
now built the biggest bridges and the deepest 
canals in all the world, Tiddlywinks took life 
very seriously. Eighteen years in the Service 
had given Tiddlywinks’ papa very deep- 
rooted ideas on the value of discipline, and 
people pitied Tiddlywinks, as a rule, and said 
that his father was too strict with the child. 
But then people did n’t understand. He 
might have been just a little afraid of his papa 
at times, knowing that his spoken word was 
Law, but for all that the child loved him 
with a love that was unutterable in its depth. 
So when Major Hummerley started away 
117 


The Loom of Destiny 

from Lonehurst for two years, to build one 
of his wonderful canals somewhere in South 
America, which was almost as far away as 
India itself. Tiddlywinks was unspeakably 
heavy of heart. His papa, in saying good- 
bye, had pointed out to him that he would 
be the only man left at home, as Harrington, 
his big brother, was at Princeton most of the 
year, and could not be around to take care 
of things. Harrington was really not his 
brother, but just his step-brother, for his own 
mother was not much older than Hal ; but 
then it was just the same as being brothers. 

So when Tiddlywinks remembered that he 
was the only man left with his mother at 
Lonehurst, it was natural he should regard 
himself as the guardian and protector of the 
house of Hummerley, and consequently take 
both life and himself quite seriously. 

But over and above all this, when his papa 
was saying those last good-byes to the weep- 
ing and broken-hearted Tiddlywinks and his 
mamma, he laughingly told the child that 
thereafter it should be his grave and solemn 
duty to look after and watch over his mother, 

ii8 


The Honour of Hummerley 

and always be good to her and make her 
happy. Being the only man at home, his 
father went on with mock-seriousness, it was 
expected that he. Tiddlywinks, should carry 
out these last despatches and duly deliver the 
said mamma safely over into his hands at the 
end of the two years. All of this the weep- 
ing and unhappy Tiddlywinks took with the 
utmost seriousness, and solemnly promised to 
do, even though his father laughed as he bent 
down and kissed Tiddlywinks’ mamma on 
the cheek, as the brougham came round the 
drive and the boxes were piled on the seat. 

Tiddlywinks finished his weep, neverthe- 
less, for he loved his father with a mighty 
love, and his heart was aching with the 
thought of being left alone in the big house. 
He knew that as soon as Hal went back to 
Princeton a terrible loneliness would settle 
down on that homestead of Hummerley. 
He was not really alone, of course, but then, 
he had always been half afraid of his mamma, 
who always wore the most wonderful and 
beautiful dresses, and had never been the 
same to him since the summer she left him 


The Loom of Destiny 

with the German nurse and went away, 
across the ocean, for a whole year. Since 
then she seemed to be always telling poor 
Tiddlywinks to be careful and not soil 
her lace when he wanted to hug her, and 
that it was rude to stare at people, and that 
he ought not to play in the servants’ hall. 
In fact, he had to forsake his baby ways, 
and in time they forgot to call each other 
“ Heart’s Desire ; ” and though they ate and 
walked and talked together, they drifted apart 
and became as strangers. The boy soon 
learned to give her only a formal little kiss, 
on the cheek or forehead, very much as his 
papa did. In time, even this occurred only 
on the necessary occasions, which were, of 
course, when he was brought down in the 
morning, and again at night, before he went 
to bed. 

It was no wonder then that Tiddlywinks, 
in his utter loneliness, used to steal down to 
the forbidden servants’ hall and lavish his 
love on the portly but good-hearted cook, 
who gave him, in return for his affection, 
such quantities of cream-puffs, and custards, 


120 


The Honour of Hummerley 

and pickles, and oranges, and cakes, that he 
used to get a stomach-ache four days out of 
seven. 

Of course, it was all different when Hal 
came home from Princeton. Hal was such 
a jolly fellow and did whatever he liked. He 
had taught Tiddlywinks how to put, and 
used to take him riding and show him how 
to smoke, and laughed uproariously whenever 
he choked. Tiddlywinks, indeed, loved Hal 
so much that three times he had smoked him- 
self sick, when Hal had shown Lees-Smith 
what a jolly fine smoker Tiddlywinks was, 
all for HaPs sake. Besides this, he had shot 
off Hal’s gun five times, and had even been 
allowed to go fishing with him, and pull in 
the little ones, which sometimes were awfully 
hard to get. The three times that Tiddly- 
winks had made up his mind to run away and 
be a Spanish Pirate, or some other awful 
Being, and was caught each time and put to 
bed in disgrace, were not, you may know, 
when Hal was at home. Hal even used to 
make his mamma allow Tiddlywinks to stay 
up at night and listen while they sang, for 


I2I 


The Loom of Destiny 

Tiddlywinks’ mamma sang beautifully. Hal, 
of course, sang beautifully too, — but then, 
Hal’s singing was so different. When his 
mamma sang it used to make him think of 
the angels in the window at the end of the 
Cathedral, only he knew that real angels did 
not wear lace, and would let you kiss and hug 
them as often as you wanted to. At least, 
angels never made you afraid of them, anyway. 

There was one particular man, with an 
iron-grey moustache and thin grey hair, who 
used to come to dinner at Tiddlywinks’ house 
and stay in the evenings to hear his mamma 
sing. Tiddlywinks hated this man with all 
the fervour of his childish heart. James, the 
coachman, once told him that this man was 
a General, and a greater man than his own 
papa, — a thing which Tiddlywinks could 
never believe. Still, he was very tall and 
very straight, and used to frown at Tiddly- 
winks, and then turn and smile at his mamma; 
and naturally the unsophisticated little Tiddly- 
winks always used to wonder what right this 
Man with the Bald Head had to look in his 
mamma’s eyes and smile so affectionately. 

122 


The Honour of Hummerley 
It made his lonely little heart burn with 
jealousy. At first he used to think the man 
was an ogre, because his teeth were so white, 
but when he told this to his mamma, she 
called him a wicked little boy for talking so 
dreadfully about a nice, kind gentleman. 

However, Tiddlywinks was steadfast in 
his hate, and it was with all his soul that he 
hated this Man with the Bald Head. One 
day he heard the cook say that that man had 
no business around the house so often, shak- 
ing her head very ominously as she made the 
remark to Sally, the maid. 

After that. Tiddlywinks’ life was one of 
endless anxiety and watchfulness. He had a 
vague idea that the Ogre was going to burn 
down the stables some night, or carry off" the 
silver-ware, or steal his mamma. Had his 
papa not told him to take good care of her ? 
In his extremity he stole Hal’s gun and hid 
it under his bed. There it was found a few 
days later by Sally, the housemaid, whereupon 
Tiddlywinks was once more sent early to bed, 
and all but set down as an incorrigible little 
murderer. 


123 


The Loom of Destiny- 

Tiddlywinks said nothing, but he watched 
the tall man with the white teeth as a cat 
watches a mouse. Even his mamma at 
last noticed it, and made it a rule to send him 
up to bed immediately dinner was finished. 
There he used to roll and toss, and think of 
the burning injustice of it all, and wonder 
what his papa would say if he only knew. 
Then he would sit up in bed and listen to the 
sound of the music, while his mamma was 
singing down in the drawing-room. He was 
passionately fond of hearing his mamma sing, 
and after a time he grew bolder and used to 
go out and stand at the banister of the stair- 
way and listen. Then he would steal down- 
stairs, and even creep up the dim hallway, and 
push under the portiere and stand there mo- 
tionless, in his long, white nightgown, listen- 
ing with rapt attention. As soon as he saw the 
music was ending, he would slip back through 
the doorway and run shivering up to bed. 

One night, as he climbed the stairs after 
the singing had come to an end, he stopped 
and listened, for he heard his mamma talking 
in a frightened way. 


124 


The Honour of Hummerley 

“ Don’t, don’t, Reginald ! ” he heard her 
cry, « for my sake, for your own, don’t tempt 
me. 

Then the Ogre, the great, tall, white- 
toothed Ogre, said something about how 
much he loved her. 

“ No, no 1 ” his mamma answered, “ I shall 
not, — I must — Oh, God ! what shall I 
do!” 

That was all he listened to. He crept 
up to bed. He knew he had been a sneak 
for listening to other people talking. Hal 
would never have done that I But he had 
not meant to. He said to himself over and 
over again that he had not meant to. Yet 
now he knew it all. His mamma did n’t 
love him because she loved the Ogre. That 
was it, she loved the Ogre. Then his 
mamma was wicked. And he had prom- 
ised his papa that he would take care of her I 
What would he say when he came home 
and found out ? What would he say ? 

In his misery he got up and knelt by his 
bed, and said every prayer he knew. After 
his solitary little childish heart had argued it 

125 


The Loom of Destiny 

out that night, he said he would send for 
Hal. Good old Hal would come and tell 
him what to do. Hal knew so well how to 
do things. 

The next morning Tiddlywinks contrived 
to avoid kissing his mamma. It was a 
mockery he would go through no longer, for 
she was wicked and loved the Ogre. By 
noon he had sent a letter off to Princeton, to 
Hal. The cook had addressed the envelope 
for him, and he had sat down and, with great 
labour and infinite pains, had secretly penned 
the first letter of his lifetime. It was just 
five words: “ Der Hal come horn quick.” 
Then he sneaked out to the stables and gave 
it to James to post, along with seven pre- 
cious pennies as a bribe to silence. All that 
day Tiddlywinks did not care for even cream- 
pufFs or cheese-cakes, and the cook told Sally 
the housemaid that she knew Tiddlywinks 
was getting the measles or scarlatina — she 
could n’t say which — he was so quiet, and 
worse than that, had calmly declined to 
scrape out the ice-cream freezer ! 

When he sat down to dinner that night, 
126 


The Honour of Hummerley 

Tiddlywinks was studiously and remarkably 
silent. The Ogre was there as usual, but 
the child scarcely dared to look in his face, 
lest the Ogre should see how he hated him. 
He knew it was useless for him to try to 
hide it. All the while the Ogre was eating 
his fish, the child was silently, ridiculously 
praying, ‘‘ Please, God, choke this wicked 
Ogre to death with a fish-bone ! Please, 
God, choke him ; choke him — choke him 
dead ! ” until it ran through his little mind 
in a sort of musical refrain. When the 
Ogre finished his trout without choking. 
Tiddlywinks knew that even God himself 
had deserted him. 

After that he felt a mysterious desire to 
fling the salad-bowl at the Ogre’s head — 
just on the little shiny, bald spot. The child 
wondered if the great heavy, cut-glass bowl 
with the sharp points would kill the man dead 
if it hit him on the right spot. 

At last dinner was over, and Tiddlywinks 
got down from his chair and was walking out 
of the room, when his mother called him 
back. 


127 


The Loom of Destiny 

“You have not kissed me to-night, darl- 
ing ! ” she said. Tiddlywinks was silent. 
“ Will you not kiss mamma, dear ? ” she 
asked, as she came over to where he stood, 
defiant, yet miserable, looking down stolidly 
at the pattern in the carpet. 

“ You may easily find a too willing sub- 
stitute,” murmured the man at the table. 
Tiddlywink’s mother turned pale, and raised 
her finger at the man in a frightened way. 

“ Very well. Tiddlywinks,” she said with 
a sigh, “ I shall not make you do so.” 

When the child had gone to bed with a 
swelling heart, she sat thinking for a long 
time, until the man’s voice roused her and 
they went into the library for coffee. 

Tiddlywinks’ mother sang that evening as 
she had never sung before. The lonely 
child in his bed heard her, crept down the 
stairs, and sat for a long time on the bottom 
step, listening. Then the music seemed to 
charm him, luring him through the doorway, 
and he stood there in the shadow, a motion- 
less little bare-footed figure in white. 

“She must be one of the angels, after all,” 
128 


The Honour of Hummerley 

thought Tiddlywinks, as he listened ; and as 
the Ogre stood beside her and bent over her, 
it seemed to the child that he could be none 
other than the Supreme Ruler of the Bad 
Place. 

When the song was finished, not one of 
the three persons in the room moved. 
Tiddlywinks was almost afraid to breathe. 

After a long pause, he saw the tall man 
with the grey moustache suddenly bend down 
and put his arms around his mother. And 
his mother, his very own mother, leaned her 
head back in one long, long kiss. Tiddly- 
winks shuddered. By mere human intuition 
he knew it was wrong. He was only a 
child, a mere baby, but he thought of his 
father, and of his own promise, and the pas- 
sion of the murderer went tingling through 
his childish veins. It was the instinct in him 
to protect his own — just as he had once 
bitten his German nursemaid for burning 
his nigger doll. 

He stole in on his noiseless bare feet, over 
to the grate where the shining brass poker 
leaned against the metal. It was nearly 
9 129 


as 


The Loom of Destiny 

long as the child himself, and it was tremen- 
dously heavy, but while the Ruler of the Bad 
Place was still trying to kiss his mother’s 
soul into the Place of Crawling Things, by 
that one long embrace, he lifted the poker 
with both hands and brought it down with 
all his force on the little, shiny, bald spot 
on the man’s head. After all, it was not a 
very heavy blow, but the man fell to the 
floor like a log. Tiddlywinks’ mother saw 
the bleeding man, and the child, all in white, 
standing over him, gave one short scream, 
and fainted. Then the poker fell from 
Tiddlywinks’ hands, and he turned and fled. 
He did not stop until he came to his own 
room. There he flung himself on his bed, 
and writhed in the awful consciousness of 
having killed, as he thought, two human 
beings. 

When Hal came hurrying home by the 
night train, knowing something was wrong, 
he found Tiddlywinks still sobbing away as if 
his heart would break. Then Hal and his 
mother had a long, long talk, shut up together 
130 


The Honour of Hummerley 

down in the library. A few moments later 
Tiddlywinks heard some one open the door 
very softly, and the first thing he knew, 
somebody was crying over him. It was his 
“ Heart’s Desire.” Then the two got 
down on their knees and said their prayers 
together, for she was still a young woman, 
and had been very lonely. After that she 
drew him to her breast and murmured mother 
nonsense to him until he fell asleep, and 
there was even a tear or two on her face 
when she finally tucked him in. 

But what Harrington Hummerley and his 
mother talked of when she went down to the 
library again, no one shall ever know, although 
the next day a long, tear-stained letter was on 
its way to South America, where a certain 
grey-eyed major was building one of his 
wonderful canals. 

As for the Ogre, he went away and 
never came back again, for Hal was tackle 
in his college team, and when a Princeton 
‘‘ Tackle ” once knocks a man down — well 
— he never comes begging about for a 
second experience. 


The Loom of Destiny 

And now Tiddlywinks kisses and hugs and 
mauls his mamma as much and as often as 
he pleases, and they call each other “ Heart’s 
Desire” once more, and though he leaves a 
dozen smudges on her very best gown, why 
should anything be said of a little thing like 
that ? 

In fact, Hal took Tiddlywinks to Prince- 
ton with him for a few days, and when they 
came back James, the coachman, was in- 
formed by wire that Major Hummerley was 
forwarding by steamer ‘‘ Colombo ” one live 
alligator. This was duly handed over to 
Tiddlywinks on his seventh birthday, with 
the information that her name was Flora, and 
that the same was for carrying out the in- 
structions of a superior officer. 

But the cook always insisted on the point 
that there was such a thing as making a child 
take life too seriously. 


132 


THICKER THAN WATER 


An* jou tawks of* Ome an* th* sins of*Ome, 
But I syes *ere, over my grog. 

As there ain* t no smell like a Lun*non smell. 
An* th* stink of a Lun*non fog! 






EORGIE was sadly disappointed in 


America, and he made no bones about 


it. When he had first been told that he was 
going to New York for three whole months, 
they — that is, Georgie and his family — were 
living down near Weymouth. So day after 
day he used to stand on the Channel cliffs and 
look out at the great ships passing back and 
forth and wonder just which ones were going 
to America, — America the wonderful, the un- 
known, — and just how long it would take 
them, and if it was really true that the world 
was round, and that though they kept on and 
on and on for ever they could never come to 
where the sun went down over the edge of 
Everything. 

Georgie did not understand exactly why his 
father was going to America, but he knew well 


135 


The Loom of Destiny- 

enough that it had something to do with the 
killing of seals away up near the North Pole, 
and to find out why it was wrong for some 
people to kill them and not for others. He 
also knew that his father was a Great Man, and 
did much toward keeping the Empire intact. 

So Georgie could not contain himself 
when his father had promised to let him stay 
with his Uncle Charley in New York while the 
Great Man himself mysteriously went on to 
Washington, to find out things about the seals. 
Georgie's father had even gone further than 
this, and bought him an air-gun, to shoot 
Wild Indians. Georgie could not hear Amer- 
ica mentioned without dreaming of Wild 
Indians. He had seen Buffalo Bill at the 
Olympia in London, of course, and there he 
had first vaguely learned what a wonderful 
place America really was. The thought 
of having an air-gun and going to a land 
where there were all the Wild Indians one 
wanted to shoot seemed very delightful to 
Georgie, and even the Captain on the steamer 
told him just how to capture Indians and 
where the best place for buffaloes was. The 
136 


Thicker than Water 

Captain’s stories sometimes frightened Georgie 
a bit, but then he practised with his air-gun 
every day, on porpoises, and the Captain 
acknowledged that Indians were n’t a bit 
harder to shoot than porpoises, only you can 
never tell, of course, just when you do hit a 
porpoise. 

So when Georgie and his air-gun landed in 
New York and he found that city a place with 
houses in it very much like London, and was 
taken to his Uncle Charley’s home and found 
it very much like their own house in Portland 
Place, though not quite so gloomy-looking, 
he was disappointed beyond words. Here his 
father left him and hurried away to Washing- 
ton. Now he had been three weeks in 
America and had not seen one Wild Indian ! 

In fact, instead of being the hunter, Georgie 
had been the hunted. When he had loaded 
up his air-gun and made his appearance on the 
street, a number of very dirty boys made fun 
of his Eton jacket and his white collar and his 
little dicer, and called him “ monkey,” and 
threw things at him, and forced him to beat 
a hasty retreat homeward. 

137 


The Loom of Destiny 

The injustice of this stirred up Georgie’s 
blood, and he fought with one of his assailants, 
whereupon the rest, in defiance of all principles 
of warfare hitherto recognised by Georgie, at- 
tacked him vigorously from behind, and sent 
him home with ruined clothes and a good deal 
of blood on his white collar. 

There Georgie found it best to remain. He 
could not make his Uncle Charley see why an 
English-born boy should tog himself out like 
American children simply because he was 
spending a few months in America, though 
Georgie pointed out to his absent-minded old 
uncle that his English knickerbockers were so 
dreadfully baggy at the knees that street 
urchins naturally yelled “ English Bloke ” 
after him and offered to do battle with him 
on every occasion. 

So there was nothing for it but to stay 
at home. He at least had the court, or, 
as Thomson called it, the back yard. This 
back yard was not large, but Georgie made 
the most of it. A high board fence, over 
which a few withered morning-glories climbed, 
shut it in from the rest of the world, and added 

138 


Thicker than Water 

to its air of desolation. Occasionally, but not 
often, a cat appeared, and this was always shot 
at and always missed by the owner of the air- 
gun. 

So Georgie lived a life of absolute and un- 
broken loneliness, knowing he could find no 
companionship on the streets, and realising 
that he was among aliens. He could not help 
remembering those long golden summer days 
at Weymouth, where he used to watch the 
Channel ships going back and forth in the 
blue distance, and climb the cliffs for eggs, and 
dig all day in the sand, and have plenty of 
really very nice little boys to play with. 

The world, however, suddenly changed for 
Georgie. It all happened one warm after- 
noon, after a day when his solitude had grown 
unbearable and he had planned to run away 
to sea. The only trouble was that he did not 
know where the sea was, and his Uncle 
Charley had not altogether enlightened him on 
the subject. It was just like such a country 
not to have any sea ! 

Without the least word of warning a big, 
beautifully painted rubber ball came bounding 

139 


The Loom of Destiny 

over the high board fence of Georgie’s back 
yard. George chased after it, and picked it 
up, and eyed it curiously. It was that sort of 
rubber ball you see only in England, and 
Georgie wondered how in the world it ever 
got to America. He squeezed it and bounced 
it once or twice to make sure that it was 
real. 

At that moment a head appeared above the 
top of the fence. Georgie looked at the head, 
and the head looked at Georgie. He thought 
it was the curliest head he had ever seen, all 
covered with soft leonine yellow hair that was 
very much tousled. She was a very little girl, 
and Georgie saw, too, that she was a rather 
nice little girl. 

After a moment of silent gazing down at 
him, she stood up on the top of the fence. 

“ Little boy,” she cried imperiously, “ little 
boy, throw my ball back, please ! ” 

Georgie, overlooking for once in his life the 
indignity of being so addressed, dropped the 
ball from his hand in astonishment. 

In that calling voice there was a soft modu- 
lation, a full-vowelled intonation, that smote 
140 


Thicker than Water 

like a memory on his childish heart-strings and 
carried him back across the Atlantic. 

“Oh, I say, you *re a little English girl, 
are n’t you ? ” He looked up at the head 
above the fence with mingled joy and aston- 
ishment. “You look dref’ly like a lion 
with so much hair ! ” 

“ And — and you ’re a little English boy, 
are n’t you ? Oh, is n’t — But I ’m not a 
little girl, though ! I ’m almost thirteen.” 
Here the lady of thirteen stood up on the 
very top of the fence to show the full dignity 
of her height. 

“’Course,” said Georgie, the diplomat’s 
son, “you is dref’ly big, now I can see your 
legs ! ” 

Here, he knew, was a friend that must be 
hung on to. “ My name is George Henry 
Purcell ; what ’s yours, little gi — I mean, 
please, m’am ? ” said Georgie, catching him- 
self in time. 

“ I ’m Mary Edif Stanley, and we live on 
Banbury Road, the real Banbury Road, you 
know. That ’s in Oxford, and I ’ve got a 
tricycle home.” 

141 


The Loom of Destiny 

“Then you know my Uncle Hariy at 
Maudlin I Why, I go up to Oxford often 
and often. And I Ve seen the Bump races, 
and Uncle Harry and me went up Maud- 
lin Tower, and the Provost of Balliol gave me 
some lemon squash, and Uncle Harry showed 
me the holes CromwelFs cannons made in 
New College. You know ’em, don’t you ? ” 

“Why, yes,” said Mary Edith, jumping 
down on Georgie’s side of the fence. “ And 
is n’t the Provost a funny fat old man ? ” 

“ Yes, and you remember how he grunts ? 
And are n’t the barges awf ’ly jolly ? And 
the Proggins ! Is rCt his velvet sleeves like 
a woman’s ? And I s’pose you ’ve seen my 
Uncle Harry rowing in the Eight? He’s 
‘ 3/ know.” 

Mary Edith s’posed she had, and asked if 
he was the one with the awf’ly hairy legs. 

Then they fell into a general conversation, 
and he explained that he was usually called 
Georgie, and Mary Edith sang, “ Oh, 
Georgie, Georgie, Puddin’y Pie ! ” and then 
the two found their bedrooms were right 
next to each other, where the windows were 
142 


Thicker than Water 

only about six feet apart, and Mary Edith 
told all about coming over on the ‘‘Teu- 
tonic,” and Georgie boasted how he and his 
father, the Great Man, had had dinner on the 
“Terrible” and he hadn’t been a bit afraid 
of the guns. Then they sat down on the 
grass together and glorified England, and 
sang the charms of Oxford, and dilated on 
the beauties of London and Weymouth, and 
belittled America, and railed at New York 
until they found they ’d forgotten nearly all 
the really nice things they wanted to say, and 
simply sat and looked at each other. 

Then all of a sudden a piece of mud hit 
Mary Edith on the ear. 

“ That ’s Freckles,” said Mary Edith, 
quietly. And the next moment a very 
freckled face appeared slowly above the top 
of the board fence. It was followed by a 
very lanky boy, who, after throwing another 
piece of mud at Mary Edith, turned a hand- 
spring over the top of the paling and nearly 
fell over Georgie in landing. 

“This is Freckles, Georgie,” said Mary 
Edith, casually. “ He lives in our house with 

143 


The Loom of Destiny 

us. He ’s not English, you know ; he ’s 
only an American boy.” 

‘‘ Well, I guess yes ! ” said Freckles with 
spirit, “ and us Americans licked the English. 
We licked the stuffin’ out of them twice, and 
we can do it again ! ” 

“Freckles, you know that’s a lie,” calmly 
reproved Mary Edith. 

“ Not on your life.” Freckles wagged his 
head knowingly. “ I guess you never heard 
of Washington. He did n’t do a thing to 
your old King George, did he ? ” 

“ Did he, Georgie ? ” asked Maiy Edith, 
with a sudden qualm of fear. Georgie, long 
ago and in certain indirect ways, had heard 
something about this same Washington, and 
his face fell. He nodded. 

“ Then we just let him do it,” protested 
Maiy Edith. Freckles smiled a very supe- 
rior smile. “You did, eh! Just ask Aunt 
Mary.” 

So the little cloud, no bigger than the face 
of patriotic Freckles, overcast the sky of a 
perfect day. A wordless sense of unhappi- 
ness fell upon Mary Edith and Georgie, and 
144 


Thicker than Water 

when they arranged for a meeting the next 
day they did it without the knowledge of 
Freckles. 

But many were the happy afternoons, fol- 
lowing that first meeting, the two aliens spent 
together, and when night came it was even 
nicer, for they would lock their bedroom 
doors and give the mystic signal, and then lean 
out of their windows and talk to each other 
of Home and how funny it was to call trams 
street cars, and ’buses stages, and say blocks 
for squares. They also marvelled together at 
the queer little American pennies, and asked 
each other why it was poor Freckles always 
said kent instead of cawnt. They also 
decided that a country where one could n’t 
buy brandy-balls was a dreadfully poor place 
to live, and that stone walls were much nicer 
than old board fences, especially board fences 
with so many nails in them. Mary Edith 
reluctantly confessed that ice cream soda 
was n’t bad^ and when the same young lady 
came into possession of a box of chocolate 
creams and these were transferred from one 
window to the other on the end of a parasol 
10 145 


The Loom of Destiny 

brought up from the back hall for the 
purpose, Georgie half allowed that American 
chocolates after all weren’t so very much 
worse than bull’s-eyes and brandy-balls. 

So the homesick English boy forgot his 
loneliness and the two aliens got along 
very well together, and the disappointment 
about the Indians was forgotten. Georgie 
saved the life of Mary Edith’s doll when it 
had a most terrible sawdust hemorrhage, and 
Mary Edith learned how to load the air-gun, 
and the days slipped away, and that little back 
yard would have been a second Eden were it 
not for the presence of Freckles. Freckles 
was older and bigger than the two aliens, and 
they knew he could say things better than 
they could, and he was always telling how the 
United States licked England in the Revolu- 
tion, and licked her again in the War of 1812, 
and could lick her now if she was n’t afraid 
to fight ! 

All this filled Georgie with a sense of in- 
expressible resentment, and brought on many 
a wordy battle between Mary Edith and 
Freckles. Georgie knew that Mary Edith 
146 


Thicker than Water 

did n’t know so much about it as Freckles 
did, or as he did himself, for he remembered 
that Washington beaten King George, 
and Perry had met the enemy and made them 
his. The consciousness of that old-time 
defeat of his countrymen lay on Georgie as a 
sort of personal disgrace. Still, he felt there 
must have been some good reason why Eng- 
land had let Washington win. There must 
have been something behind Perry’s victory 
on Lake Erie ! 

“Why,” said Freckles, “you two kids 
seem to think England ’s the only thing that 
ever happened ! Aunt Mary says that when 
it is n’t raining in London you can’t see your 
hand for fogs.” 

“Fogs are great fun^ truf’ly. Freckles,” 
gravely declared Mary Edith. 

“And rain is rather nice — in England,” 
said Georgie. 

“ And it ’s awf ’ly cold and blowy here in 
the winter,” claimed Mary Edith. 

“ And you can’t buy brandy-balls here,” 
added Georgie. 

“ And, Georgie, is n’t it terrible ! They 

147 


The Loom of Destiny 

don’t know what a tuck shop means over 
here ! ” 

“ Oh, you kids make me tired,” said 
Freckles. “But I know one thing. If 1 
was going travelling, I would n’t go to a 
country that had licked mine so often.” 

Georgie was silent. It was always several 
hours too late when he thought of the right 
answer. 

“ Freckles, you ’re telling your lies again.” 
That was the way Mary Edith wriggled out 
of answering such questions. 

“ All right, if you think they ’re lies, go 
and ask Aunt Mary. We licked you in 
the Revolution, — licked you just horrid, — 
and we did the same in 1812. There was 
Perry’s battle on Lake Erie, and there was 
the ‘ Hornet,* and the ‘ Kearsarge,’ and the 
‘ Chesapeake,’ and the ‘ Argus,’ and the — the 
— Oh, shoot, why, there were so many times 
we did it I can’t remember them all. But 
if you don’t believe me, just go and ask Aunt 
Mary.” 

“ I intend to ask Aunt Mary,” said Mary 
Edith, tearfully, “ but I ’ll tell you right now, 
148 


Thicker than Water 

Freckles, I know you ’re telling the most 
hor’ble stories ! ” 

“ Yes, Freckles,” said Georgie quite as 
dolefully, ‘‘and I'm going to ask my Uncle 
Charley.” 

This Georgie, with much fear and stam- 
mering, actually did. 

“ What — what ’s this the youngster is 
trying to get at ? ” said Georgie’s Uncle 
Charley, looking up over his paper when the 
questions were timidly put to him. “ Amer- 
ican Revolution ? Bah, all rot, boy, all rot ! 
The American Revolution was won right in 
England — sympathy of the great middle 
classes of the home country ! But, dear me, 
child, you can’t understand those things ! 
What’s that? War of 1812? No, sir,” 
thundered Georgie’s Uncle Charley, in his 
good British wrath, “ no, sir, it was not won 
by America. England had her hands tied, 
sir, her hands tied fighting Napoleon, and she 
had nothing but a few scrub regulars to send 
out. But they did what they were sent for, 
and along with the Canadian militia they 
kept it mighty hot for the American forces 
149 


The Loom of Destiny 

for three years, sir. As for the ultimate out- 
come of those campaigns, sir, I have only to 
refer you to the actual text of the treaty of 
Ghent and Professor Goldwin Smith’s — but, 
dear me, you are only a child ! I quite for- 
got for the moment — quite forgot ! So off 
to bed with you now ! ” 

Georgie went scampering up the stairs 
with a sudden new lightness in his heart. 
The Empire had been upheld. The stain 
had been washed off the escutcheon. 

He waited impatiently until everything had 
grown quiet and then gave the accustomed 
signal, — six knocks on the wall with his 
shoe, — and leaned out the window to tell 
Mary Edith. 

“ It was a lie,” whispered Georgie, “ and 
Uncle Charley says that the Revolution was 
won in England, by what he called the middle 
classes in between, you know.” 

“ There ! ” said Maiy Edith, with convic- 
tion. “ I always knew that Freckles was 
telling stories. Oh, I say, Georgie, arenU 
you glad ? ” 

Georgie made the sound that usually ac- 

150 


Thicker than Water 

companies the mastication of a chocolate 
cream. Mary Edith understood. 

“ Georgie, there ’s just one thing to do. 
We must go right straight and tell Freckles.” 

“ Y es, we ’ll have to go right straight and 
tell Freckles,” echoed Georgie, triumphantly. 

“ Then you go down to the side door and 
I ’ll let you in.” Mary Edith was a woman 
of action. “ Are you afraid, Georgie ? ” she 
asked, as she noticed him hesitate. 

“ Oh, no,” said Georgie, stoutly. 

He closed the window and slipped down 
through the big hall and out through the back 
door in his white Madras pajamas. At the 
side door of the other house Mary Edith met 
him in her nightgown. They took hold of 
each other’s hand, for it was very dark inside 
and everyone was asleep. 

They went noiselessly from room to room 
in their bare feet, silently climbed the wide 
stairway, and then went up still another stair- 
way. 

They slipped through the door of Freckles’* 
room and carefully closed themselves in. 
Mary Edith punched the sleeping Freckles 

151 


The Loom of Destiny 

smartly on the ribs. Freckles did not 
stir. 

“ You do it, Georgie ; you can do it the 
hardest.” Georgie thumped the figure curled 
up in the bed with all the strength of his 
arm, remembering past insults to flag and 
country. 

“ Wha’ ’s the matter now ? ” said Freckles, 
sleepily. 

“It’s a lie. Freckles, a hor’ble lie. You 
did n’t really beat us,” said Mary Edith. 

“ The Revolution was won in England by 
the middle classes in between, and you knew 
it all the time ! ” 

“ And you did n’t lick us in the war of 
1812, either,” cried Georgie. “England had 
her hands and feet tied, for she was fighting 
with Napoleon, and that’s just the same as if 
Mary Edith tried to lick Uncle Charley and 
you at the same time, and she could just send 
out a few men, just the tiniest few men you 
can think of.” 

“ And we did n’t do a thing to them, did 
we ? ” yawned Freckles, settling his head 
more comfortably down in the pillow. 

152 


Thicker than Water 

“ But you did n’t really beat^^ said Georgia, 
with a swelling sense of new-born pride. 

“ ’ Course you did n’t,” declared Mary 
Edith. 

Freckles turned over and yawned sleepily 
once more. ‘‘ Oh, you kids must be crazy. 
Go way and le’ me ’lone.” 

“ Georgia,” whispered Mary Edith in the 
big dark hall, as they held each other’s hands 
and felt with their bare toes for the first step 
of the stairway, “aren’t you awFly glad 
you ’re English ? ” 

For the second time that night Georgia 
made a sound as if he were eating a chocolate 
cream. The Empire had been upheld ! 


^53 


/ 


I 



INSTRUMENTS OF EROS 


Ohy it V then I ^ankers after * Omey 
An' a sniff o' Bethnal Greeny 
An' ' Ery who was queen o' Pub an' 'Ally 
— An' th' Things w'ot Might ' Ave Been! 


'I 

Hi 




H e had always been called “ Hungry 
— Hungry Dooley. Just how he 
came by this name no one knew. It was 
thought by many to have been inspired by 
the boy’s thin, wistful-looking face, with 
its restless eyes and queer little outstand- 
ing cheekbones. Others, again, held that 
the name sprang from Hungry’s passion 
for carting away envied loads of luscious 
fruit and delectable vegetables, picked up 
along the river front. These he disappeared 
with into the dim recesses of an East Side 
cellar which he dignified by the name of 
home. 

For Hungry, besides being an everyday 
wharf rat, was the stay and support of three 
even hungrier-looking sisters and a sickly 
mother, to say nothing of an alcoholic father 

157 


The Loom of Destiny 

who was able, now and then, to beat or bully 
a penny or two out of him. 

It was only right, therefore, that Hungry, 
as he wandered busily about the odoriferous 
curbs and the crate-covered docks of the 
river front, should take himself seriously. 
He had, of course, many rivals, for there was 
always a wandering herd of equally hungry- 
eyed, ragged-looking urchins haunting those 
alluring wharves, flitting about from boat to 
boat and cart to cart, like a flock of over- 
grown city sparrows, ever ready to pounce 
down upon and fight over any stray piece 
of fruit, melon rind, or other dubiously 
misplaced edible to be found among those 
over-crowded, dirty, busy, clamorous streets 
and stalls where men bring from far off all 
those things that go to feed a great, hungry, 
heedless city. 

But the most opulent of those hawk-eyed 
scavengers was Hungry Dooley. Not an 
over-ripe banana fell to the ground but he 
knew of it. Not an unsalable apple was 
cast away but he had sized it up as a matter 
of food-stuff. Not a remnant of old fish 

158 


Instruments of Eros 

was left behind but his aquiline eye was 
on it. 

And things went well, and business throve 
with Hungry. In fact, as time on, he even 
took unto himself a mate. 

She was as diminutive, as thin of leg, and 
as dirtily unkempt as Hungry himself. But 
one could see by the way in which he laid 
his choicest portions of refuse banana and 
bruised pineapple before her, that to him she 
was as a goddess on a pedestal, and a thing 
to kneel to, and worship, and adore. 

So plain was it that Hungry had a 
“ stiddy ” that envious stories went about 
through the busy little band, and even certain 
taunts were thrown out. 

But none of these disturbed either Hungry 
or his sweetheart Brickie, who, by the way, 
was seen rapidly to gain flesh under Hungry’s 
solicitous eye. 

And as spring glided into summer all life 
changed for Hungry Dooley. A rose mist 
seemed to hang over the river, and a happy 
golden halo over the world. He did not 
know what it meant, but the rattle of the 

159 


The Loom of Destiny 

waggons seemed like unending music to him. 
The sound of the cables became, to his ears, 
like the murmur of running streams. The 
alley where Brickie lived was an Eden and a 
place of infinite delight, and with her at his 
side he was happy, indescribably happy ! 

In Hungry the paternal instinct had devel- 
oped at an early age. He even gave Brickie, 
willingly, his last bit of orange, for Brickie’s 
appetite was enormous. He found he could 
satisfy the gnawing pain in his own stomach 
by saving the peelings and eating them after- 
wards, when Brickie was n’t looking. At 
times, it was true, the gnawing would become 
frightfully strong, but on his hungriest day 
he would rather see Brickie’s lips close deli- 
ciously round the end of an over-ripe banana 
than eat it himself. 

For three beautiful but fleeting months 
Brickie clung to him, and the rose mist hung 
over the river, and the halo over his world. 

But it was a dark day for Hungry Dooley 
when Ikey Rosenberg discovered that river- 
side El Dorado. When Ikey found a place 
where fruit could be had for the picking up, 
i6o 


Instruments of Eros 

he transferred his hunting-ground from the 
East Side to the region of wharves. Ikey 
was an element from a different world, how- 
ever, and from the first it was felt he was an 
intruder and a menace. 

He brought seven pennies in his pocket, 
the very first day of his invasion, and took 
pains to show them, by which vanity he lost 
three. "But in two short days he had won 
the heart of Brickie Sniffins with a broken 
mouth-organ, a little red and blue lantern, 
and four penny dishes of ice cream, pur- 
chased, with great ostentation, from the 
despised Italian who dispensed that cooling 
essence of perpetual joy from a three-wheeled 
red cart on a nearby corner. 

Brickie, in a wonderfully short space of 
time, grew to feel that she was cut out for a 
man who had money and could treat her as a 
girl ought to be treated. She openly de- 
clared that she did not care to be seen with a 
person who could n’t wear shoes and stock- 
ings, and who had to live in a cellar. That 
declaration was made the day after Ikey had 
taken her round and showed her the riches 

i6i 


II 


The Loom of Destiny 

that lay in dazzling disarray in the window of 
the store of “ Isaac Rosenberg, Pawnbroker.” 

The final break came when Brickie stood 
on the curb with Ikey and made faces at 
Hungry. 

Hungry saw the change, but he said nothing. 
Strange tales went the rounds of the wharves, 
and it was said he was silently eating his 
heart out. Disconsolately he passed by 
bananas and onions and oranges, letting ready 
hands snatch the treasures from under his 
very nose. He would not even stop to fight 
over a discarded pineapple. 

How it all might have turned out it is hard 
to say. But on the paltriest accidents of life 
hinges the course of destiny. 

It came about simply because the driver 
of an express waggon took four glasses of 
beer, when he knew three glasses were 
enough. His waggon was piled high with 
crates on their way to the commission house. 
And in those crates were little wooden boxes 
of imported Maryland strawberries. Their 
fragrance was wafted up and down the 
wharf, and they glowed through the chinks 
162 


Instruments of Eros 

in the crate in such a manner that Hungry 
could not help following after the waggon. 

When the driver cut a street corner too 
short, and sent his front waggon wheel 
up on the curbstone, Hungry knew that 
top crate was going to fall off — knew it ten 
seconds before it struck the ground. 

The huge crate burst, of course, and a 
great odorous, crimson wealth of Maryland 
strawberries tumbled out into the road. A 
couple of passing waggon wheels crushed 
juicily through them. The driver sat help- 
lessly in his seat, calling all the curses of 
heaven down on the heads of his docile team. 

But Hungry had been ready. He fell 
bodily on the ruddy and tumbled mass, and 
at the risk of being run down by a dozen 
passing rigs, scooped up the fallen wealth 
as he had never scooped up fruit before. 
Brickie they should be for — Brickie — every 
one of them. Brickie’s mouth it was he 
seemed to see closing on them as he thrust 
handful after handful into his grimy coal 
sack, now reminiscent, in perfumes, of many 
mingled fruits. The fact, too, that they 
163 


The Loom of Destiny 

were out of season added infinitely to their 
value. 

But the driver felt that he had to get even 
with some one. Still swearing, he climbed 
down slowly from his waggon. He broke off 
one of the sides of the ruined crate. With 
it he viciously welted the unheeding child 
down on his knees in the road. The child 
did not move, so he struck him again, and 
then again. Still the boy with the bag kept 
on gathering in the scattered berries. A 
policeman sauntered up, tasted a berry or 
two, and told the driver to leave the kid alone. 
But in a minute or two the whole herd was 
upon them, and the crate was irretrievably 
lost. It was Hungry, however, who had the 
pick of the pile. 

Brickie watched the scene with wistful 
eyes from the sidewalk. She had not been 
getting on very well with Ikey of late, and 
when he declined to enter the struggle for 
some of the berries, she felt a new and strange 
contempt for him. For Brickie was very 
fond of strawberries ! 

Then, before the whole world. Hungry 
164 


Instruments of Eros 

limped over to the curb and proffered her 
his bag of precious fruit. Brickie blushed, 
declined with feigned reluctance, blushed 
deeper, and then broke out crying. Hungry 
gave Ikey Rosenberg a black eye for jeering 
at those tears. 

Through her sobs she protested that she 
would never do it again, and having eyed the 
open bag, and caught a glimpse of the wealth 
therein, made a mouth at Ikey Rosenberg 
that decided the matter for all time. 

Once more the rose-tinted mists seemed 
to dwell on the river, and a golden halo 
hung over the city, but few people ever 
'knew that a mere little crate of Maryland 
strawberries was the means of bringing back 
a lost Eden ! 


i 

\ 

\ 


I 


I 

I 

i 


I 

I 

i 


\ 

i 









AN ESSAY IN EQUALITY 


For there* s * Ennery in *is * ansom cab, 
A-goin* up an* down th* Strand: 

An* if I was^ Enner^j, an* *Ennery me, 
I* d give this bloomin* * and. 







AN ESSAY 
. EQUALITY 



I T was his by right of discovery. For 
two glorious weeks he had puddled in 
it, and now, naturally enough, he looked 
upon it as his own private property. 

It was not, to be sure, in his own Alley, 
but then he had found it first, and it was his 
by right of occupation. And now, if need 
be, he was ready to do battle for it, as any 
son of Adam is ever ready to do for his own, 
or what he calls his own. 

But then it was worth fighting for ! It 
was the most beautiful of mud puddles, three 
inches deep and four whole feet long. Such 
things should never have been in a well- 
ordered city, but every day the watering-cart 
man who lumbered up and down the Avenue 
on his great red wagon left the water-hydrant 
leaking a little, so that the puddle was per- 
169 


The Loom of Destiny 

petually replenished. Suns might shine on 
it, and winds might blow over it, but 
morning, noon, and night it remained the 
same tempting thing of delight, oozy of 
bottom, and sweet to the touch of shoeless 
feet. 

Each day the boy from the Alley brought 
his sailboat, made of a shingle, with three 
rakish masts and a rigging of dirty string, 
and sailed it adventurously up and down his 
puddle. With a piece of cord tied to the 
bowsprit, which was very much on the bias, 
the boy from the Alley puckered up his 
childish lips, and up to his ankles in mud, 
choo-choo-chooed delightedly as he pulled his 
little boat back and forth from one end of 
the puddle to the other. 

And for two golden weeks this continued. 
Then, one morning, he found an invader on 
his property. The stranger was a boy of 
four, wearing shiny gaiters of tan leather 
and a black-velvet suit with rows of Glitter- 
ing Things on it. The intruder was not 
exactly in the puddle, but he was looking 
down at it with such happy and longing eyes 
170 


An Essay in Equality 

that the boy from the Alley cleared for 
action. 

He eyed the invader darkly. He had 
found a footprint on his Crusoe’s Island. 
With curious and half-envious eyes, he 
noticed the Glittering Things worn by the 
other. Then, with a great air, he launched 
his little boat and choo-choo-chooed up and 
down the puddle simply to show the other 
boy that he was the owner. He contrived, 
at the same time, to splash as much mud and 
water as possible on the boy in velvet. But 
the boy in velvet did not seem to mind in 
the least. In fact, he drew nearer, and stood 
at the edge of the puddle, his patent-leather 
shoes sinking in the mud. 

The boy from the Alley resented the 
intrusion. 

“ G’won, kid,” he said belligerently, al- 
though he was not so tall as the other by 
three good inches. 

‘‘ T’ant I watch oo ? ” lisped the other, 
wistfully, in a voice of such baby timidity 
that it filled the Alley boy with disgust. In 
fact, the Alley boy was disagreeably sur- 
171 


The Loom of Destiny 

prised. When he knew the invader was n’t 
going to fight him, his respect for the invader 
went down ten degrees. 

Still, the owner of the puddle felt not a 
little proud of the fact that a being wearing 
so many Glittering Things should come and 
ask favours of him. He even said that the 
boy in velvet might come over and sail the 
boat. But just once ! No more than once, 
because that boat cost more than all the 
money the banana man ever had in all his 
life! 

After a time the boy in velvet suggested 
taking off his shoes, like the other. The 
Alley boy never before had seen such white 
legs, and was much disgusted when his com- 
panion confessed the stones hurt his feet — 
but just the littlest bit ! 

The Alley boy showed the other how to 
squeeze the mud up between his toes, and 
how to pick up pebbles with his big toe, 
curling it under. Then the two grew quite 
friendly, and had a most glorious mud battle. 

How that battle would have come out it 
is hard to say. At the critical moment the 
172 


An Essay in Equality 

invader’s English nurse came around the 
corner of the Avenue, waving affectionate 
farewells to a policeman. When she beheld 
the boy in velvet she held up her hands 
and screamed. In a second she had seized 
him and jerked him viciously on to the 
sidewalk. 

“ ’Eaven ’elp us ! ” she cried, as she gazed 
on him with despair. She shook him vigor- 
ously, after looking to see that no one was 
in sight, and gathered up his mud-stained 
things, roundly abusing the owner of the 
puddle as a pug-nosed brat of a thieving 
street-arab. The street-arab stood in calm 
indifference, letting the soft mud ooze up 
between his toes as he watched the tears 
gathering in the other boy’s eyes. The 
nurse seized her charge and with a contemp- 
tuous sniff at the indifferent child in the 
puddle led the other boy homeward, asking 
’eaven to ’elp ’er each time she looked down 
at his clothes. 

As the boy in velvet was jerked bodily 
along, he gazed back longingly at the mud- 
puddle and the ship with three masts. Why 

173 


The Loom of Destiny 

could n’t he do that sort of thing, too ? Why 
were all the good things of life denied him ? 
Why could n’t he play in that beautiful black 
mud, as well as the other boy ? 

He looked back regretfully at the multi- 
millionaire, who was still letting the soft 
slime ooze deliciously between his toes. But 
the strong arm of that irate nurse hauled him 
relentlessly on. He tugged to get away, but 
in vain, and as he was dragged homeward 
up the Avenue his lusty bawling echoed up 
and down that decorous street, and filled the 
inmost heart of his English nurse with a 
secret desire to spank him. 

It was two whole weeks before the boy 
in velvet appeared on the scene again. When 
he walked slowly down the Avenue his 
face was quite as white as the lace on his 
velvet collar, and there was a big swathe 
of flannel about his throat. The nurse 
held his hand, for his legs were still very 
wobbly. 

The boy from the Alley was there with 
his shingle, choo-choo-chooing gaily up and 
down the puddle. 


174 


An Essay in Equality 

“ I Ve been thick ! ” said the boy in velvet, 
in a weak and doleful voice. 

“Was you ? ” said the owner of the puddle, 
indifferently. That seemed an enviable dis- 
tinction to the Alley boy. He thought it 
was uttered in the form of a challenge. So 
with a show of infinite pride he stooped to 
fix his vessel’s bowsprit. 

“ Yeth, I *ve been dreffully, dreffully thick,” 
wailed the boy in velvet, gazing with hungry 
eyes on the shingle boat, the mud, and the 
water. 

“Yes, he ’as, you little pug-nosed himp of 
filth, and it was you as done it ! ” cried the 
red-faced nurse. “ Whitney Algernon ’Olland, 
you come ’ere. Don’t you dare to talk to 
the likes of ’im. ’E ain’t fit comp’ny for 
you ! ’E ’s only a dirty little thievin’ street- 
arab, and it was ’im as nearly killed you. 
Come along, Whitney Algernon ’Olland, or 
nurse ’ll go straight ’ome and tell your 
mamma ! ” 

She cast a withering look on the owner 
of the puddle, seized the boy in velvet, and 
dragged him off. The boy in velvet did not 

175 


The Loom of Destiny 

and could not understand how she ever could 
make such a mistake. As she led him 
relentlessly up the Avenue he wept copiously. 
But the owner of the puddle choo-choo-chooed 
up and down his domain of mud with calm, 
supreme, imperturbable indifference ! 


176 


THE HEART’S DESIRE 


But 1 watch th* 'igh-toned nobs go out 
W^ere th* English liner lays ; 

An^ elp me Gawd, but ^ er Union ’Jack 
Fills bally eyes with ' aze ! 




1 



III* iRj 11,1 ji 




kHERE were many things to show that 


Teddie’s arrival in this world was an 


unwelcome event. The first symptom of 
such feeling was the fact that three days 
after his birth his mother drank half a bottle 
of carbolic acid, and was found dying on the 
very bed where Teddie lay wailing for his 
breakfast. 

This took place in the big brown-stone 
hotel that overlooked the Plaza, and to show 
that there were others who regarded Teddie’s 
advent in the light of an intrusion, the 
diamond-studded manager of that particular 
hotel walked up and down saying it was a 
pretty kettle of fish, and that his house would 
be ruined, and that if a newspaper reporter 
even so much as showed his face in that 
hotel to kick him out. 


179 


The Loom of Destiny 

The worst of it all was that not a scrap 
of letter or paper or personal property could 
be found to show just who “ Mrs. James 
Brown ” really was. Even the name and 
initials had been cut out of the dead wo- 
man’s underclothing — and it was noticed 
at the time that they were of the veiy finest 
silk ! — and the wearer of the diamond studs 
was in a terrible way, not so much because 
the infant would have to be handed over to 
the tender mercies of the police and the city 
Foundling Hospital, but because of the fact 
that if such a thing were done the whole 
story would, of course, get into the papers. 

So when the Irish elevator man, not alto- 
gether from selfish interests, said that he 
would take the baby, for a consideration, 
Teddie was joyfully handed over to him, 
accompanied by two nice crisp ten-dollar 
bills. This same Irish elevator man straight- 
way carried Teddie to his little home on 
Thompson Street, where for seven months 
his childless wife lovingly over-fed him. 
Then it so fell out that she had to make 
room for a little boy of her own. Teddie 
i8o 


The Heart’s Desire 

was passed on to an equally humble home 
on Sullivan Street, and was accordingly there- 
after known as Teddie Sullivan. 

But in his new home the sturdy Teddie’s 
appetite developed the most unexpected pro- 
portions, and he was quickly shuffled out into 
the wide world, where he fell upon evil days 
and would surely have died, had not a kindly- 
eyed Scotch widow in Perkins Place taken 
him in. His new foster-mother, who was 
laundress and shirt-maker and housekeeper 
by turns, had seen better days. But as her 
pursuits were now often those of mendicity 
she found the hungry-eyed Teddie to be a 
potent accession, and the gratuities he called 
forth were numerous. As MaPgut Mac- 
dougalPs love for Glenlevit rye, however, 
was even stronger than her love for the 
child, there were many days, indeed, when 
Master Teddie went without his dinner. 

But here it was that Teddie emerged 
from babyhood and learned to say his first 
words with a strange little touch of the High- 
land burr to them. In time, too, he grew 
big enough to explore the boundless vistas 

i8i 


The Loom of Destiny 

of Perkins Place, which had no less than 
twelve tumble-down tenement houses facing 
on it. But nothing is so proudly exclusive 
as a slum like Perkins Place, and as it was 
an open secret that Teddie's forebears were 
unknown, he found no one to play with, and 
from the first day of his appearance on the 
Place repeatedly had flung at him an epithet 
which he, happily, did not understand. In 
more generous moments they merely made 
fun of his yellow curls, and called him 
« Girlie ! ” 

His loneliness, however, did not weigh 
heavily upon him. He held animated dis- 
course with bits of broken flower-pots, and 
fell into the habit of telling wonderful sto- 
ries to the third step in the landing, which 
had a crack in it, and therefore always list- 
ened best. Later on he invented a series 
of games, in which the pieces of sticks were 
all men and the stones all tigers. If the 
tigers knocked over the men first throw, that 
meant they were all eaten up. But if the 
men fell down across one another, that meant 
the tigers could n’t touch them, and the tigers 
182 


The Heart’s Desire 

had to begin all over again and keep eating 
up until the men were all gone. Tigers, in 
fact, from the first day Teddie overheard 
Bud Persons expatiating on their ferocity, 
had a peculiar fascination for him ; only 
sometimes they invaded his dreams by night 
and made him wake with feelings of unutter- 
able terror. 

The child, as he grew older, also took a 
strange delight in watching people pass up 
and down the Place. He would suppose 
with himself that some Great Power had 
ordained that if a man did not pass before he 
had taken twenty breaths he would have to 
drop down dead. By the hour he would 
patiently sit and test this supposition, glory- 
ing over each victory and depressed by each 
defeat. 

Then he took passionately to papers, 
books, and pictures. He came across a 
number of old “ Illustrated News,” with 
pictures of the siege of Paris, and over these 
pictures of war and adventure he would pore 
by the hour. He had refused to go to the 
Night School, and could not read, but he 

183 


The Loom of Destiny 

made up stories for each illustration, and it 
was not until the pages were worn to shreds 
and tatters that he found it possible to forego 
this pleasure. 

Then he grew more adventurous in spirit 
and stole beyond the borders of the Place 
into unknown country, and even ventured 
so far away as Washington Square. It was 
here that life really opened up for him, for it 
was while following after an Italian organ- 
grinder that he came upon the Avenue with 
its smooth pavement, its hurrying carriages, 
and its long vista of white-globed lamp-posts 
leading afar off into the mysteriously alluring 
Unknown. 

From the first, that Unknown Country 
enchanted the child. Just why it was he 
did not know, and never could tell, but day 
by day he stole away from the gloom and 
smells of Perkins Place and trudged off to 
the Avenue, where he could go wandering 
inquisitively up and down, watching the 
horses, the hurdygurdies, the big houses, 
and the children who were so different from 
his neighbours on Perkins Place. In time, 
184 


The Heart’s Desire 

when he had explored all the lower end of 
his street of enchantment, he found it pos- 
sible, by climbing on the backs of up-bound 
carriages, to reach the remoter parts of the 
asphalted street, going sometimes even so 
far as the Park, where it seemed that miles 
and miles of green and growing things 
stretched away into the distance. 

But he liked best of all to stand on the 
crowded sidewalk and listen to the women 
with silk skirts rustling by, to smell the per- 
fume, and to hear the clank of the chains on 
the carriage horses as they came champing 
up to the stone steps. He liked to stand 
and get whiffs of music from the houses and 
to see the beautiful beings all clad in glitter- 
ing things going in and out. He had a 
weakness, too, for bright colours and flowers, 
and the glimmer of the gilt furniture through 
some of the big hotel windows filled him 
with a nameless hunger. They certainly 
did not have that sort of thing down at 
Perkins Place, and as the time went on he 
even grew to think of his home with a cer- 
tain disdain. His love for the odorous livery 
i8S 


The Loom of Destiny 

stable which, with its stamping horses and 
tall hansoms and men who were always 
washing down big carriages, had once seemed 
a sort of paradise to him, waned and finally 
flickered out in his affections. He forgot, 
too, the undertaker’s window with the little 
satin-draped coffin in it, before which he 
used to stand by the hour with wondering 
eyes. And when he had once climbed up 
the wide stone steps and peeked timidly into 
the Cathedral, dark, vast, silent and mysteri- 
ous, he no longer sat opposite the little 
Sullivan Street Church and wondered why 
people walked up through its door, always in 
their best clothes, and with cold, set faces. 

So Teddie Sullivan became a sort of Buc- 
caneer on the city’s high seas of beauty, and 
went cruising up and down the Avenue in 
search of all those sounds and sights in which 
he took such an incongruous delight. There 
seemed to be a taint of aristocracy in his 
slum blood. At many an afternoon reception 
he was an uninvited guest, and quite often sat 
on the railing outside and dined, in fancy, at 
the different restaurants where he saw the 

i86 


The Heart’s Desire 

“ swell guys ” go. In time he even grew to 
be fastidious, for where he could not see car- 
riages and horses and hear music he would 
not deign to attend. 

But as summer came on he found these 
grew less and less frequent, so one warm 
afternoon when he found forty broughams 
blocking the Avenue and a strip of red carpet 
covering the pavement, he knew that the sea- 
son was not yet altogether over. 

A couple of policemen guarded the gate- 
way and two footmen stood on the wide 
stone steps beside the open doors. The low 
buzz of talk and an occasional strain of 
music came from the big cool-looking house. 
It was a wonderful scene to Teddie, who 
wormed his way up toward the policemen 
and stood by the great stone gate-pillars, with 
his freckled nose thrust through the iron rods 
of the fence, watching the shifting panorama 
with wistful and unwearying eyes. 

As the afternoon slipped away the crowd 
began to come out from the house. Three 
times did one of the fat policemen, who kept 
guard at the gateway, pull the child away by 
187 


The Loom of Destiny 

the scrufF of the neck of his ragged little 
coat, but each time the intruder had edged 
persistently back. Now that the guests were 
coming from the house the fat policeman did 
not care to keep up the undignified combat, 
so Teddie remained. 

Many of the figures that stepped past were 
familiar to him. Among the last persons to 
come away was the short man with the 
white whiskers, who always wore the gold 
cross on his coat, and then the tall, white- 
faced woman who always rustled louder than 
all the others, and of whom the child was 
more or less afraid. Teddie remembered 
them all. Then a man with a long black 
coat and boots that shone very funnily came 
down the steps walking with a girl in white, 
with lilac-blossoms and lorgnettes. Teddie 
had not seen the tall girl in white go in. 
She was a new one ! She must have come 
before he did. 

The freckled nose squeezed further in 
between the iron bars. It was like finding a 
new friend, or discovering a new world, and 
his eyes drank in every detail. 

i88 


The Heart’s Desire 

She was the best one yet. Her dress was the 
whitest dress he had ever seen. Her hair was 
brown, and her eyes were grey — grey and 
soft and kind. It was no wonder he felt a 
new and strange feeling run through his 
puny little body. Then and there he tum- 
bled head over heels in love, although he did 
not know it. She made his heart thump as 
only the band and the war pictures of the 
Siege of Paris and dreams of Santa Claus had 
hitherto done. He guessed she was the fairy 
that Bud Persons’ Sunday-school teacher 
used to talk about. On further thoughts he 
decided she must be the Angel in the old 
‘‘ Harper’s Magazine ” that Mar’gut Mac- 
Dougall would let him look through only on 
Sundays. Yes, that was it. She was the 
Angel. 

The young man with the black coat 
pointed out the little freckled face with his 
walking stick. They both laughed. 

“ What an excruciatingly dirty little devil ! ” 
said the man. 

The girl looked at the child for a moment, 
and then came over to him. 

189 


The Loom of Destiny 

“ What is your name, my little man ? ” 
she asked. 

Teddie was silent. He could not have 
spoken for every house on the Avenue. His 
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and he 
flushed crimson. Then the Angel (he was 
sure she was the Angel now) stooped down — 
actually leaned down over him until he could 
smell her flowers. He fixed his eyes blankly 
on them. He wriggled his bare toes in the 
anguish of his embarrassment. 

“I — er — really — er — would n’t touch 
him, you know ! ” advised the man in the 
black coat. How the child loathed the man 
in the black coat and shiny boots ! 

The Angel only smiled. “ Did I frighten 
you, dear ? ” she asked gently. 

The bare toes wriggled in mute embar- 
rassment. So the Angel sighed, took out 
one of her flowers and gave it to him, and 
said to the man, as she turned to the carriage, 
that there was something fine in that child’s 
face. Teddie heard it, and would have gone 
through fire and water for her. 

Before following her the young man in 
190 


The Heart's Desire 

the black coat diplomatically dropped a quar- 
ter into the youngster’s hand. Teddie was 
thinking of other things, and never knew it. 
The last words of the Angel went singing 
through his veins. He did not see the fatal 
quarter until the carriage rolled out of sight 
far down the Avenue. When he beheld the 
coin, and realised what had been done, his 
flush was even deeper than before. He in- 
wardly cursed the man in the black coat. 
She would think he was a beggar. He was 
disgraced in the Angel’s eyes. 

When he got back to Perkins Place he 
secretly dug a hole, three feet deep, and in 
the bottom of that hole he put the accursed 
quarter. On it he piled seven brickbats 
and flung four old boots and three empty 
tomato cans. Then he shovelled in stones 
and earth, stamping it all down savagely 
and vindictively. 

The flower he placed in an empty castor- 
oil bottle, and watered it for days with 
infinite care. 

For the rest of that week his mind was 
troubled with strange things. When Sniffins 
191 


The Loom of Destiny 

came and kicked him, he did not even try to 
kick him back ; which conduct made Sniffins 
ask if he was sick. 

A perceptible change crept over Teddie. 
His life had flowered into its first love. 
Night after night he dreamed of Angels with 
grey eyes and lorgnettes, and sometimes of a 
man in a long black coat. The tails of this 
coat in the dream would always grow longer 
and longer and thinner and thinner, until the 
man turned into the Evil One and crawled 
hungrily up and down Perkins Place on all 
fours, looking for something he could never 
seem to find. 

By day Teddie trudged up and down the 
Avenue like one in a dream, watching out 
always for one particular carriage. Whenever 
this one carriage bowled past him, an in- 
toxicating tingling fear seized on his limbs, 
and left him staring blankly after it from the 
curb. 

But no sign could he ever get from the 
Angel as she swept by. Once he even grew 
so bold as to climb up behind her victoria, 
intending to show his face over the back 
192 


The Heart’s Desire 

and speak to her. But a sudden terrible 
embarrassment seized him before he could 
do this, and in his new sense of shame and 
dread he slipped down and dodged away 
among the stream of hurrying carriages. 

He grew content merely to watch her from 
the sidewalk, probably much the same as 
Ferdinand once watched his window in the 
Florentine Riccardi. 

So when Mar’gut MacDougall, without 
previous warning, confronted him with a 
new pair of pants and declared he was grow- 
ing up an idle young ignoramus, and that on 
the next morning he should start to school, 
his heart sank like lead and he knew that he 
and the Angel should see each other no 
more. He said nothing, but slipped quietly 
out of the house and made his way up the 
Avenue, with a new fire in his childish eyes 
and a mad despair gnawing at his heart. 

The hours slipped away, but he waited and 
waited, resolved that this last time he must 
and should speak to her. 

It was late in the afternoon before the 
waiting child caught sight of her as she 

13 193 


The Loom of Destiny 

passed up the crowded thoroughfare without 
so much as seeing him. He watched the 
carriage fade away up the Avenue, swallowed 
up by the stream that surged about it. A 
sickening sense of loneliness and desertion 
overcame him, and a sudden gush of tears 
welled to his eyes. 

There was still a chance that she would 
come back again, but he knew the Angel 
had forgotten him. For the first time in his 
childish life, waiting there at the curb for the 
Woman He Loved, he felt the wordless 
soul-hunger of loneliness. 

She did at last come back. It was almost 
dusk when the child again caught sight of 
her carriage sweeping back down the Avenue. 
She sat back in the deep seat, seeing nothing 
and looking far into the distance. 

Teddie, in a mad sort of despair, waved 
at her and then called out to her. But she 
neither saw nor heard. 

Then a sudden thought, intoxicating as 
wine, ran through the child’s mind. The 
thought that he should lose her for all time 
made life itself a trivial thing. 

194 


The Heart’s Desire 

He watched his chance, dodged out among 
the hurrying carriages and hansoms, and de- 
liberately flung himself in front of one bay 
team. He shut his eyes and waited. 

Davis, the coachman, had been brought 
over from London, and Davis knew his busi- 
ness. He cursed with a good British oath, 
and brought the two bays around in a sharp 
semicircle that swung the right-hand wheels 
completely off the ground. They missed the 
boy by three inches. Davis was on the point 
of cutting at him with the long coach whip, 
when he caught the girl’s eye. The Angel 
remembered him. 

Davis, help that little boy into the car- 
riage, please,” she said quietly. 

The scandalised Davis got down and 
did so. 

Now we ’ll drive this little boy to his 
home, Davis, if you please.” 

The child was mute, limp, and miserable. 
He almost wished he was dead, for a mo- 
ment, until the delicious consciousness that 
he was near her fully dawned on him. 

The Angel took him on her knee and 

195 


The Loom of Destiny 

looked for several minutes into his blue eyes. 
Then she asked him, point-blank, why he 
had done such a thing. The child, who was 
known throughout Perkins Place to be an in- 
genious, inveterate, and incorrigible liar, broke 
down, and weeping repentantly, wished he 
really was dead, and in the performance 
completely ruined the Angel’s white shirt- 
waist. But the Angel was all patience, and 
between sobs and whimpers he told her the 
whole story of his love for her. He talked 
as he had never talked before, and when he 
had nothing left to say he sighed and looked 
at her and sighed again. He was happy. 

He touched her with his brown little fin- 
gers. 

“ My, I like bein’ near youse ! ” he said. 
“ It ’s like th’ hurdygurdy ! I alius want 
’er git right close up to it an’ see where th’ 
soun’ kind ’er first comes frum. Youse is 
jus’ like that ! An’ I can’t help it, youse is 
so — so much like music ! I guess I ’d 
rawer listen to youse then th’ music, 
tho’.” 

His arms slipped timidly up to her neck, 
196 


The Heart’s Desire 

where he let them rest with intuitive tender- 
ness. ♦ 

It was the strangest love confession ever 
made to her. But it was a love confession. 
And she was a woman. 

She slipped her own arms around the child 
and drew him close to her. There had been 
some one else, once, who had made the same 
confession. And now there came a dozen 
every season, yet that one, the real one, 
seemed very long ago, and it had been very 
hard work to keep from getting lonely. 

But the sniffing Davis had pulled up with 
a jerk at Perkins Alley. The woman sighed, 
and the child’s face lost its light. 

‘‘ Won’t you kiss me good-bye before you 
go, dear ? ” said the Angel. 

Some old portal of memory swung back 
and Teddy kissed the girl on her eyes, as 
some one long ago — he could not remember 
who — used to kiss him. . 

“ Yer eyes is orfully salty tastin’,” said the 
child. 

The girl did not answer. She was think- 
ing how He had said to her once, long ago : 

197 


The Loom of Destiny 

“ See, dearest, I shall kiss away every salt 
tear, and we shall be happy ! ” 

“ Home, m’m ? ” said Davis for the fourth 
time. 

“Yes,” said the girl absent-mindedly. 

Teddie stood in the gathering dusk, listen- 
ing to the sound of the wheels dying away in 
the distance. He drew a deep breath. With 
that breath he took into his childish nostrils 
all the blended, heavy odours of Perkins Place. 
Never before did the awful hideouness of it 
all so seem to hem him in, and crush him 
down to some darker under-world. 


198 


NOT IN UTTER NAKEDNESS 


Ages ago it seems to us, 

O April, ere our birth, — 

Ages ago it must have been. 

Upon some other earth 
We knew Thee, when without regret 
Those happier hills we trod 
When by a star or two thy feet 
And ours walked nearer God, 




I T was a warm, showery April day, with 
little patches of sunlight every now and 

then. 

The Home faced the Square, and in the 
Square were many trees, and in the trees 
were many sparrows — thousands of them, 
it seemed, and all of them trying to say that 
Spring had come. There was also a robin 
or two fluting away in their mellower con- 
tralto among the tall elms. 

The air was so soft, and it smelt so much 
like Spring, that the Doctor, as he turned to 
go out, told the Nurse that there was no 
reason why the windows might not be opened 
and the boy let sit up for a while. 

So the Nurse wheeled the little white bed 
over beside the window and opened the sash. 
Then she made a sort of nest of the pillows 


201 


The Loom of Destiny 

and blanket, and lifted the boy up into it. 
This she did with a quiet alacrity, for she 
was used to such things. 

“ I tell you, young man, those are pretty 
thin legs of yours ! ” she said, not unkindly, 
as she tucked him in for she liked the 
child. 

The boy smiled weakly, but did not 
answer. Then the nurse gave him his 
milk, with lime-water in it, and brushed his 
scant yellow hair while he drank it. When 
he had finished she took the glass, gave a 
little touch to one of the pillows, and hurried 
away, for she had thirty other sick children 
to attend that morning. 

Bliss — from the day he was born they 
had called him Bliss — sat quite still, watch- 
ing the sun slip on and on through soft grey 
clouds with mother-of-pearl edges. Then, 
all of a sudden, it came out full and dazzling 
and golden, and lay in a patch of glaring 
yellow across his bed. He could feel it soak- 
ing in through the blankets. The feeling 
was new to him, and it ran up through his 
thin legs like wine. 


202 


Not in Utter Nakedness 

On the maple outside two or three spar- 
rows were twittering and chirping away as 
if they could never say all the good things 
they had to talk about. Further up the 
Square a hurdygurdy began to play. The 
strong sunlight had made Bli.ss’ eyes droop, 
but at the sound of the hurdygurdy he sud- 
denly opened them. He could not hear very 
much of the music, though he strained his 
ears painfully to catch the sounds. He, in- 
deed, had never thought hurdygurdies could 
make such beautiful music. While he sat 
listening the Nurse softly opened the door 
and glanced in. She saw the quiet smile on 
the child’s lips, and closed the door again, 
without speaking. 

Then the hurdygurdy moved closer down 
the Square and began to play once more. 
This time he could hear it quite plainly. It 
mixed with the twittering of the sparrows 
and the calls of the robins in the elms. The 
smell of the buds came with it, too, and the 
dust that danced up and down so busily in 
the square of golden sunlight falling across 
the bed seemed a part of it. 

203 


The Loom of Destiny 

How funny it all seemed, thought Bliss ; 
how funny and familiar and old. 

He said to himself that he felt as if he 
had sat there for years and years and years, 
and watched the same trees, and listened to 
the same birds, and heard the same hurdy- 
gurdy. No ; it had not been years, but thou- 
sands and thousands of years. It sounded so 
old, and familiar, and reminiscent. 

And the sunlight on the bed — he won- 
dered where it could have been that he used 
to sit and watch the dust going up and down 
just the same as it was doing here. He 
sniffed the air lazily. It smelt very nice, 
with the perfume of the trees and some sort 
of blossoms that he could not see. 

The breeze that blew in at the window in 
little gusts swayed the white curtain and 
made the warm patch of sunlight on the bed 
shrink up, and then grow bigger again. The 
hurdygurdy went away, and the birds 
seemed to stop for a while, and only a street 
cry or two came up from the Square. Bliss 
believed that he liked the quiet the best. It 
seemed as if the World had turned over, and 
204 


Not in Utter Nakedness 

then gone to sleep again. Something within 
him, some voice he had never felt before, 
seemed to be groping its way blindly up 
from his heart, and trying to express itself. 
He wanted to say something — to sing it — 
but he could find no words that would fit. He 
felt suddenly as if he had wings, and that 
he could drift airily up and down in blue 
ether far above the earth. He was so happy 
he felt that he must sing as nobody had 
ever sung in all the world before. But he 
could find no lines for the song, and only 
stretched his thin arms out helplessly into 
the warm patch of yellow sunlight. 

Then a sudden terrible, mysterious loneli- 
ness stole over him. It seemed as if he had 
been alone all his life, and that everything 
was grey around him, and that the silence 
was so beautiful that he dare not speak to 
break it. He wondered if he could tell it all 
to the Nurse, and if she would understand. 
Then he knew she would n’t, because he 
would not know how to begin, and it was 
one of those things Other People never un- 
derstood. But the birds were singing again 
205 


The Loom of Destiny 

outside, and away up the Square another 
hurdygurdy had begun to play, and the 
blind was flapping lazily to and fro and let- 
ting the warm sunlight stream over him. It 
was all so poignantly lovely ! The world was 
so strangely beautiful ! Life was so unspeak- 
ably sweet ! 

The Nurse came in on tiptoe, for she had 
expected he would be asleep. 

She slipped a clinic thermometer under his 
tongue, and sat on the bed looking into his eyes. 

‘‘ How *s temperature ? ” asked the Doctor, 
showing his head at the door. 

“ It ’s up two points,” said the nurse, im- 
passively. 

“ H ’m ! Then tell Simpson not to mind 
about the operating table. Friday will be 
soon enough.” 

The nurse looked at the child and sighed. 
Bliss was gazing far out over the tree tops 
at the blue sky. He reached out his hand to 
take the Nurse’s. 

Without a moment’s warning a torrent of 
sudden tears burst from his eyes, and his 
body shook with a passionate sob. 

206 


Not in Utter Nakedness 

“ Why, Bliss, what is it, dear ? ” asked the 
Nurse, for never before had the boy been 
known to do such a thing. 

“I — I — don’t know what it is ! I — I 
am so happy, and it is all so funny — but you 
can’t understand. Nurse. It’s inside here,” 
said the boy, putting his gaunt little hand over 
his heart and letting the tears rain down his 
cheeks unchecked, ‘‘ an’ if I tried all my life 
I could never tell you. Nurse. No, never ! ” 


** But how is it!* asked the Young Artist^ 
as he walked arm-in-arm across the Square 
with the Great Many — ‘‘ how is it you 
have done so muchy in one lifetime?** 

The Great Man looked up at the tall old 
trees. The smell of Spring was very sweet 
in the air, 

“ It has not been much!* he said, ** And 
it is such a simple old story, A great deal 
of loneliness ; a great deal of hard work ; 
a little lucky perhaps ; much misery ; a 
little love ; a few enemieSy and a friend or 
two ! But after ally it has not been much. 
As you grow older you will find that the 
207 


The Loom of Destiny 

work you want to do is the work you can 
never do. It is the elusive^ the fugitivCt 
the intangible idea that you will grope after 
so blindly^ and yet so passionately. And yet 
you will never quite capture it. The spirit 
of it will steal over you at timesy at rare 
moments y but it will be more a pain than a 
pleasure to you. You will feel it within 
youy and the greater you are the more you 
will feel ity and though you try and try all 
your life long to utter ity you cannot and 
you could not do it. No, never ! ** 


\ 




NOV 20 1899 

1 







